


Dreamland

by LittleSammy



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:57:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSammy/pseuds/LittleSammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some places just feel like the dead end of the world. Some places actually are. AU, end of the world (sort of) and a generous sprinkling of SciFi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was written for anr in the ncis_ficathon on LJ, even though it won't be posted there, based on this prompt:
> 
> _Tony/Ziva. Tony and Ziva on the run together. Bonus points if it's apocafic (but no zombies or aliens, please)._
> 
> One year ago, I saw this prompt for the first time, when -- through a series of weird circumstances -- I came to write ["Paperwhite"](http://littlesammy.livejournal.com/225339.html) for her in last year's ficathon, even though I hadn't signed up for it. Last year, that same prompt triggered my "Tony and Ziva undercover in Mexico" epic that is completely plotted out but just didn't want to be written quite that urgently. So, when I was assigned to anr this year and she gave the same prompt again, my first thought was "Darn! Now I *have* to write that thing!"
> 
> Yeah, well. Then this happened. ;)
> 
> One chapter isn't safe for work. What most definitely isn't safe at all is the wonderful artwork wennuhpen made for me, hand-drawn, incredible and omg brainfreezingly sexy. Can be found [here.](http://littlesammy.livejournal.com/283183.html) Once again - definitely not safe for work...
> 
> Spoilers for every season except one. Yes, it connects the dots. A lot of them.
> 
> **thanks:** To wennuhpen and mooncombo, for live cheerleading, line-by-line dissection and general awesomeness. And to the SummerCampers, for more awesomeness. And, hey, to anr for triggering this. If I were feeling a little more naughty, I'd say "You give good prompt!" ;)

** Zero **

Tony DiNozzo has never been a very patient man. Kicking back, relaxing, not doing anything for a change -- it's never really been his thing. He's doing fine for an hour or so, but anything longer than that and he starts to severely piss off the people around him.

A lot of people could -- and would -- vouch for that. He always works best when his mind is occupied. When he has a mystery to unravel or facts to dig out. Whenever he doesn't have a case to sink his teeth into, he gladly switches his attention to his co-workers instead and snoops around in their lives, unbidden, unwanted.

McGee, of course, doesn't provide much in the sense of braintertainment lately, and sometimes Tony wonders how a guy Abby used to date could have turned into such an uninteresting old man over night. Abby, in turn, is much too open for her own good and thus, no real challenge when it comes to secret fact-finding missions. Ziva or Gibbs, though, are always more than rewarding subjects when there are private notes to browse through or phone calls to listen in on.

It's almost like a reflex, something he can't turn off. He needs this, needs figuring things out like a fish needs water. If he can't unravel a mystery, a motive or intentions, he gets bored. And a bored DiNozzo is halfway on his way to dangerous. (This is another thing many people would vouch for in a heartbeat.)

So, on days like this one, with all fresh cases closed and the cold ones already adorned with rude side notes, when there is nothing left to do except watch Ziva answer an email or hear McGee snicker (not because of a human being, but because he has just cracked an algorithm he's been working on for two days), Tony often resorts to desperate measures to keep his brain busy.

He stops the spitballing after Ziva threatens to choke him in very vivid phrasing. (Okay, maybe not directly after the threat. More like when she's already gotten up and settled her cute little behind against the filing cabinet behind him. _And_ plays with a letter opener.) He does about three prank phone calls until Vance suddenly stands in front of his desk and glares at him with a fiery passion (not of the good kind). And the fascination of drawing lewd cartoons lasts for about five minutes because Ziva helpfully points out that he is very likely to throw out his back in _that_ position.

It doesn't take long until he feels all itchy and restless, and so he forces himself to close his eyes and play the old 'What If' game with himself. What if Sophia Loren were still a hot, twenty-something doll of a girl and desperately wants to go on a date with you, for instance. (That one never gets old.) What if you win the lottery and crack the twenty-three million jackpot. What if the world went down and--

Ooh. Now that's a good one.

What _if_ the world went down? Would it go quietly, like, just keeling over one day from pollution? Or would it go out with a bang, with civilization blown all over the place? With humanity extinct, except for a few survivors who struggled valiantly to make it work and repopulate the mothership? 

Hm. Scary, but intriguing. So what would happen, for instance, if--

"Tony."

He isn't happy with having his train of thought interrupted once it gets going. With a grimace he opens his eyes and sees Gibbs towering over him with a glare that easily rivals Vance's earlier one.

For a moment Tony wonders if he has blabbed something tell-tale in his daydream. Gibbs doesn't let anything show, though, he just keeps glaring and repeats his name.

Funny thing is, he does it with Ziva's voice.

Tony moans softly and fights the urge to just curl up some more and ignore the insistent voice. Eventually, though, he forces his eyes open with an effort and stares at Ziva's face. Her real face this time, not the dream-memory of her. Her real face with the scab on her temple and her skin in that pale sepia color, not the tasty caramel it used to have in regular light. Her face, with her eyes like liquid amber, glowing from the inside. Literally, glowing. Not just a figure of speech.

Right. World going down. Check.


	2. One

**The previous night.**

They are about fifty miles from Caliente when it happens. And it happens, just like that, no bang, no whimper. He doesn't even feel the change at first, except for the slight tingling rubbing all over his skin. He's too busy trying to control the car, which has suddenly died under his hands and is now fighting his attempts to keep it safely on the road with a stubbornly locked wheel. His foot comes down on the brake hard, and Ziva jerks beside him, suddenly wide awake when the book she kept on the dashboard hits her in the face. She yells his name, not quite panicked because Ziva doesn't panic, but she still yells while he is busy getting the car to stop without crashing them into the nearest tree.

It's just a figure of speech, really. There aren't any trees in this stupid, hot country that's as close to desert as he ever wants to get -- a little too close, even. No trees, just miles and miles of blurry dust and dry bushes that look as if they've been sitting in the exact same spot since the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.

Finally, the car skids to a halt, and he breathes out slowly. His arms feel like he's torn a few fibers, and his hands hurt because he had them cramped around the resisting wheel so hard.

"Ow," Ziva mutters, and when he looks over to the passenger side he sees how she presses a hand to her temple. "Why is it that you get to complain about _my_ driving, but I ne--"

The word freezes in her mouth when she turns her head and looks at him, and even then he doesn't it notice right away because he still stares at the small trickle of blood seeping through her fingers. And the funny thing is, in the end her blood is the thing that makes him realize something is wrong. Because her blood is a lot darker than it usually looks. (And no, in an ideal world he shouldn't know what her blood looks like, but he does, of course.) It's almost black, and his eyes follow the drop that slides down the back of her hand.

And then, when he meets her eyes, it sends a sudden jolt of panic through him. She says his name again, and this time there's an edge to it that grates against his skin because it's not natural. Because Ziva doesn't panic. She's not the type to.

Then again, he never figured her for the type to look at him with her eyes all wide and glowing like slow-burning coals, either.

He blinks, but the image remains and her eyes keep glowing, and so he turns his head and stares at something else because wer-Ziva creeps him out. And that's when he finally notices that the rest of the world doesn't do much better. The car isn't the only spot drenched in pale, murky sepia, draining the last semblance of sunlight out of this suddenly quiet world. Quiet like it's in shock, while the bushes outside lose the last of their colors. (And it's funny, really. He thought they looked dead before.)

He takes a shaky breath and flexes his aching fingers, but even while he lets go of the steering wheel, he wants to keep clinging to it. It's a solid, tangible thing at least. It feels real. A lot more real than what he's looking at.

He feels Ziva's gaze prickle on his skin, and he knows _her_ attention hasn't strayed from his face once, so he's not surprised when she says his name again softly. There's still the same edge to it, the edge that says she's willing to freak out any second now. 

He fights his pulse that wants to go through the roof, and he even manages to shrug when she asks him what's going on here. It's not like he has the slightest idea to throw into the brain pool right now. He does know, though, when he glances at the mirror and sees his own eyes simmer in a toxic shade of emerald, that they sure as hell ain't in Kansas anymore.

*** *** ***

The car turns out to be deader than the bushes outside, and he can't get more than a pathetic click out of it when he turns the key in the ignition. He wills the machine to cooperate, but his mind tricks fail. After that it's hard work not to clench his jaw because he knows it's just a little after five pm out there and the frigging desert still looks like it's been plunged into a fucked-up version of arctic night, with all the colors washed out and only the more intense ones standing out -- which, in this case, means it's all just a dim, softly spotted plane to him because this part of Nevada doesn't _have_ any intense colors.

"Are you alright?" he suddenly asks when he forces himself to remember that Ziva is bleeding. 

He turns his head and sees her press a tissue to her temple. She looks frozen because she's staring at her own face in the mirror as if she's just seen a ghost. And yeah, that's a pretty apt description, considering. "Ziva," he repeats, louder this time to snap her out of it. "Are you alright?"

She blinks and puts the mirror back up. "Yes. It's just a scratch," she murmurs. Then she looks at him again, her eyes still wide while she presses her lips shut because otherwise she'd just ask him again what's going on here. And Ziva doesn't do stupid questions.

He fights the temptation to sound dumb himself and concentrates on finally letting go of the wheel completely. It takes an effort to unclench his fingers, but eventually he manages. His hands tremble after that, and it's a reflex to reach for the door handle and get out of the car, just so it feels like he's actually doing something. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Ziva tense, and he realizes too late that maybe it's not such a bright idea to run out into whatever this is without thinking twice about it.

Then again, he muses as the stale and strangely lukewarm desert air hits his lungs, there's only so much they could have accomplished inside the car.

The world looks even more bleached out and drained when he steps into it, leaving the small oasis of remotely normal behind. His skin tingles harder suddenly, and he remembers the sensation from a few moments ago, when things suddenly went Twilight Zone on them. It feels weird, as if there is some deep, primal instinct that doesn't want him to go out there. It fights with something else, something buried even deeper. Something that urges him on with excitement. The tiny hairs at the back of his neck rise, and Tony blinks and forces himself to look around and search for clues.

He doesn't find any, of course. It's just a freaking desert, both ways, both sides of the road. Desert that is now robbed of even the pretense of life and left with only sepia tones and things that look like heat ripples in the distance. They have to be something else, though, because for some reason there isn't any of the pressing heat left Tony has complained about not too long ago, just some vaguely pleasant, slightly-above-average temperature in a weirdly averaged-out world.

He hears the passenger side door open and turns his head in time to see Ziva step out of the car, too. And then he suddenly blinks hard because she has pulled her hair band loose, and when she moves, her curls turn into a livid, tangible shadow in this soft, lifeless world. She looks left and right, and the movement drags the shadows along and creates little ripples in his perception.

She takes a deep breath, and he watches her press her lips together hard while she thinks furiously. (He knows she does that right now. He's seen her think a lot of times.) Her eyes still glow, not glaring like torches, more like simmering coals. Slow-burning lava, turning her face into something scarily intense. She blinks, and he's reminded of a cat during the night when he loses her gaze for a heartbeat.

Eventually, she opens her mouth and tries to say something, but in the end, she doesn't. And yeah, he knows how she feels. He doesn't have the right words either and even less of an answer. He doesn't even know what questions to ask.

They stare at each other for a few more heartbeats, and then, out of the blue, it's the same way they work so often -- they think of something at the same instant and act completely in sync without the need for a signal to trigger the action.

"My phone's dead," she states at the same instant he swipes his thumb for the third time across the touchscreen of his, only to find it as unresponsive as the dirt road under his shoes.

"Mine, too," he sighs, and there's a weird kind of longing in his voice. He can deal with losing a lot of things. Most of his co-workers wouldn't believe it, but he could easily go without his TV for days and even longer without a computer. But no phone -- that's something else. His phone is his tie to civilization, to other human beings. It's his last resort of distraction if all else fails against the onslaught of boredom, too. And it's something that deeply eases his mind because having his phone means having backup whenever _he_ fails. A phone means he can call Gibbs or Abby or even McGee when he's stuck in a tight spot or needs someone to bail him out or answer the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Or drive him home when he's so wasted that he has a hard time remembering his own name, let alone his address. (Although, truthfully, the latter occasions are rare and have grown rarer still since that one night when he'd tried to cop a feel and blame it on the booze later, only that Ziva hadn't really stopped his wandering hand. And of course that's the only thing he remembers out of the whole damn blurry night, the one thing able to make him cringe in retrospect. Figures.)

He shakes his head and drags his thoughts harshly back to the present, just when Ziva narrows her eyes and dabs at the cut on her temple again.

"Great," he says because that's what he always does, say something just so the silence doesn't creep up on them. "So we're stuck now? Smack dab in the middle of nowhere?"

She lowers her hand and looks left and right again. "What part of nowhere?" she asks, and it looks like she's doing her best to ignore the fact that he's moving to her side of the car now and looking at the cut on her temple. (She's gotten her head knocked around a lot, after all. He figures it's not unreasonable to be concerned.) She manages the avoidance pretty well until he puts two fingers under her chin to lift her face up so he can see her better in the dim light.

"Stop it," she hisses impatiently and jerks her head back. 

"Great Basin Highway," he answers her earlier question and lowers his hand, but doesn't step back. Neither does Ziva. "Somewhere in the nowhere between Caliente and Vegas. Closer to the former, I'd say."

"Right," she says and grimaces. "There was a marker about a mile ago, I think? We didn't get very far then."

"You were _asleep_ , Ziva, how can you even--" He meets her eyes, and even aglow she manages a perfectly incredulous look, as if he had just proven to be exceptionally dense for even contemplating the question. So he does what he always does at this stage of the game, he sighs and lets his head fall back and closes his eyes. "Right. Forget I asked."

She gives him a tiny smile when he glances back at her eventually, and that uncoils a bit of the tension curled up in his gut. For a tiny moment he slips back into his game of 'What If', and it leaves him with the feeling that there are worse people he could be stuck with in this particular mess.

*** *** ***

Ziva is the one who warms up sooner to the idea that they have to keep moving to get out of here. It takes Tony's reality-refusing brain a little longer to realize that this time they can't call anyone. That no helpful elves are going to come along, pick them up and show them around the place. He knows she's right when she voices it. He still winces when he thinks too closely about walking from here on.

He knows how to do it. He works out so he can keep outrunning the bad guys, after all. But that doesn't mean he has to like it. He prefers physical exertion that comes with an endorphin reward in the end, and running never did that for him.

They empty their backpacks in silence and switch a few essential things from their overnight bags. Ziva shoots him a weird glance when he starts to take off his suit and dress shirt and pulls a pair of sweats and a particularly well-worn OSU shirt on instead.

"Huh," she comments, and he's not really sure what she means by that. Maybe she didn't expect him to be sensible enough to leave his good shoes behind in favor of sneakers. Or maybe she had no idea he'd brought his running gear in the first place.

They have one full water bottle and one that's two thirds empty between them, and that fact makes him itchy. He never learned how to be fond of the desert, and the mere thought of running out of water in the middle of it makes the spit dry up in his mouth. Even this lifeless, smoothed-over version of a desert is still enough to incite the same reaction in him. Desert is desert, and anxieties are just that.

"Back or forth?" he asks when he finally slings his backpack over his shoulder and closes the trunk, and she ponders the question for a moment.

"There was a rest stop on the map, I think, about seven or eight miles southeast from here," she finally says slowly. "We should keep going in that direction. Back to Caliente is much further."

He tries but he still can't help the groan. " _Eight_ miles?" he repeats, and Ziva rolls her eyes and starts walking.

*** *** ***

Ziva David has never been particularly good at standing still and just waiting to see what happens, and that shows now, when she stubbornly sets one foot in front of the other and moves along the deserted highway. ( _Deserted desert ditch._ For some reason Tony's earlier wordplay, annoying at the time, keeps ringing in her head now and distracts her.)

She doesn't know what the plan is yet, but she knows she needs to keep moving. Needs to keep pushing on. Because the moment she stops, she will have to think about what is happening here, and that won't be a sensible thing. She's confused enough already.

So instead of succumbing to the danger of thought, she keeps moving forward because at one point that will surely bring them out of this mess and back into the sane place. Back into the reality she is used to. It has to, because anything else is not an option. Anything else would be something she can't explain, and unlike Tony, she doesn't care much for mysteries. Not even ones of this scale.

She hears his breathing beside her, not harsh yet, but well above his normal pattern, and for a moment it confuses her that he lets her push him like that. When she glances at him, though, she sees his face tense and his jaw tight, and that's when she realizes that he may be even more scared than she is. He wants to get out of this mess, whatever it is, just as badly as she does. Maybe because for once he has no idea how to go about explaining it away.

He feels her gaze and flashes her a grim smile, and the green glow to his eyes makes her brain stutter because it reminds her vividly how very much this is _not_ normal. She won't go as far as saying it's scary (yet) but it's definitely something she has to adjust to.

For a moment she strays from her own directive and wonders if this would have happened if they'd stuck with the original plan -- to spend the night in Caliente and have McGee arrange for a pickup flight from Lincoln County airport in the morning. If she hadn't given in to Tony's pleading to drive to Vegas instead. She knew he wasn't all that interested in pushing the investigation along. He'd just heard Vegas, and a switch in his brain had flipped and rendered him immune to any reasonable arguments. (Although she has to admit he was right about one thing -- driving over there _was_ the less pricey choice of action for NCIS.)

She hates it when he turns logic around on her. She hates it even more when he uses her own gut reactions against her. When he plays her (which he had, when he'd accused her of merely wanting to wring as many nights with him out of this as possible). In the end this non-argument left her with rolling her eyes at him and telling him to 'just get the car', and he'd bounced off merrily, whistling. Sometimes she wonders if she has spent too much time with this person who disguises as a man.

But then he does things like take the almost empty water bottle out of his backpack and stare at it for a few endless seconds before offering it to her first, and she realizes it hasn't been nearly enough.

*** *** ***

"Don't," she warns him when they see the first sign. It sits beside the road, looking harmless and innocent enough, just like every other road sign, except that it's smothered in stickers from all over the world, apparently, leaving hardly enough room to decipher the sign itself. It reads 'Extraterrestrial Highway', and the way Tony suddenly scrunches his forehead means he is about to say something that will make her groan. She knows how he looks when his brain goes off on a tangent like that.

He blinks and purses his lips, and Ziva sighs and lets her head fall back, waiting for the inevitable. "We're in Nevada," he says slowly. "I totally forgot."

 _'Oh reeaally?'_ she wants to say but the sarcastic remark never makes it out and singes her tongue. 

"Area 51 is somewhere east of here," he continues and lifts an eyebrow as if that is supposed to explain everything. She refuses to react and encourage him in any way, though, and so he sighs and elaborates and totally ignores the fact that she doesn't want elaboration. "They do secret government experimental mumbo jumbo there, Ziva. And if you ask me, this looks pretty damn experimental..."

"I'm not asking you," she mutters, adjusts her backpack and resumes walking.

"Hey, it's a valid theory!" he calls after her. "And you know Abby will kill us if we come back without any proof either way, right?"

She blinks rapidly and keeps her eyes fixed on the road while she refuses to look at her partner. She can't allow herself to think about home just yet, about the others. She has to concentrate on getting out of here first. Because if she doesn't, she will have to wonder if there still is a home to come back to. And she can't afford to think about that right now.

"Ziva, come on. It's just a--"

He flinches when she turns around and stares at him, her eyebrows drawn together, her eyes narrowed. She wonders what he sees in her face just now because for a second he looks like he'd rather be somewhere else.

"And theories are going to get us out of here how?" she asks him harshly, and he blinks and opens his mouth only to shut it again after a few seconds.

"Rights," he says and pushes past her, and Ziva watches him walk on with a weird feeling curling up in her stomach.

She feels the need to apologize, but she isn't sure how. She never is, just like he never is when he screws up. They've always been like that, and the years spent as partners haven't changed much about that. They've gotten better at it, but they still haven't learned how to get it right in the first place. 

Some part of Ziva is very tired of that.

*** *** ***

Crystal Springs turns out to be a ghost town, in both the literal and the figurative sense. She thinks that it's a pretty place, even in this weird light that makes everything look like it's ripped straight out of an aged photograph. And it's alive and lushly green (or would be, if they had a normal sun above them instead of swirling fog), and that's a refreshing change from the dry, mostly dead landscape they have been striding through for the better part of the evening.

At least it's alive in theory. There's not much of a town left, really, just a few farm houses, and most of these look like they haven't seen a living soul for longer than Tony and Ziva have been walking. They knock at a door that looks slightly more used than the others, and when there's no reply, Tony suggests she should pick the lock so they can at least try and see if there's a working phone inside.

For a moment Ziva hesitates and thinks about turning away now and just walking on because she's not sure what they'll find inside. If they'll find anything at all. She stares at the door knob and tries to will its unknown owner into turning it after all. Maybe he didn't hear them right away. Maybe he fell asleep in front of the TV and--

And TVs don't work in this strange zone, much like cars or cell phones or digital watches, who mockingly remind them of the exact time they stopped functioning.

She jerks out of it when Tony presses his hand against the small of her back. His eyes are on her, and she knows him well enough to feel his question coming, so she suppresses the shudder that wants to run down her back and reaches for the door knob herself.

*** *** ***

Her hesitation is palpable, especially when she turns the door knob experimentally and the door swings open, just like that. Tony keeps his eyes on her and watches her closely. 

It's a reflex, he can't help it. His attention always zooms in on Ziva whenever he feels there is something off with her. He stopped questioning how he knows these moments long ago. He just does, like now.

She glances at him and meets his eyes for the briefest moment before she steps into the house. Maybe it's just a result of the weird light, but she looks really pale.

*** *** ***

They don't find any traces of humans inside, neither dead nor alive, and in some ways that's a relief. (He isn't sure how he would have dealt with bodies, to be honest.) There is, however, a half-eaten meal sitting on the kitchen table, and Tony watches sudden goose bumps march up Ziva's arms. She quickly steps out of the kitchen again without commenting the scene any further, and he's tempted to follow her, just so he can keep an eye on her. He doesn't, though. He turns the other way instead and gives the ground floor a quick sweep while Ziva picks up the phone in the hallway. 

When he comes back, she shakes her head at him, and yeah, not that surprising. He hadn't really expected to magically find landlines in perfect working condition.

He purses his lips and thinks hard while he watches Ziva creep back towards the entrance in tiny baby steps. She looks more uncomfortable by the minute, but she still refuses to voice her uneasiness.

"Come on," he says eventually, and they both flinch at the words slicing through the thick silence. "I think I saw a sign for some kind of research center up the road. Let's see if they have a working phone."

She looks at him with an expression that says she knows all too well he's just humoring her. That the chances for that building to fare any better are slim at best. She still nods and almost falls out of the door, her face tense, her cheeks still pale. As if she had a ghost on her heels.

Tony breathes out slowly and follows her. He gets it, really. He gets that she is completely freaked out by this quiet, unreal world that is too far from the one she grew up in. And yes, it gets to him, too, that they haven't seen a single soul yet. 

He hasn't seen or heard any animals, either, not even a rat or a cockroach, and that gets under his skin even more. And that's saying something, considering he's seen a lot more sci-fi movies than Ziva has.

*** *** ***

She groans, he grins, and that's about the only exchange that happens between them about the fact that his road sign leads them to an _Alien_ Research Center. It looks like a warehouse (and yes, there's a certain irony to it that his brain appreciates) and has a giant silver-grey alien figure standing guard at the entrance.

Tony keeps smirking in her back because he can't help it, and he knows that she knows because she just stubbornly sets one foot in front of the other until she reaches the warehouse.

This door is just as unlocked and leads them into something that is mostly a memorabilia shop, not a real research center. Which isn't the worst thing. They need supplies, even if it's just snacks. He laughs at the _'Alien Fresh Jerky'_ packages, which look a lot like beef jerky, but more fun. He stuffs a few packages into his backpack, then rips one open to munch on the fly. (He hasn't eaten in too long.)

The sound of tearing foil makes Ziva turn her head and look at him. It's not a real glare she gives him, but he still says "Sorry" and turns towards the wall with the cold drinks that are no longer that.

The first energy drink he opens smells like cat piss, and he doesn't care to find out what it tastes like. He assumes it's not the intended flavor as he goes through intensely colored cans and bottles, all covered with witty sci-fi or UFO-related designs, glaringly bright and comic-y. It takes him a while to sort out the ones that are just mineral water, and all of them go into the backpack, too. Not that many, most of the cans are filled with creepy-smelling energy drinks, but it should last them a day at least.

He chews away happily on the alien jerky when Ziva comes back from her exploration, stuffing a few bags of peanuts and a glass of olives into her own backpack. Strange, but it seems a lot easier for both of them to raid this store than look around for something useful in the abandoned farm houses. Maybe because here they only think about what they need to keep going instead of the people who no longer need it.

"Phone's dead, too," she says and grabs a strip of jerky from him, chewing furiously as if the dead meat were somehow at fault. "Not sure this place is of much use."

"Dunno," he says and stares over her shoulder at a small Perspex display that holds a few maps.

Ziva follows his gaze and rolls her eyes again when she sees the title. "Please don't tell me you want a souvenir," she murmurs and shakes her head. "A map to Area 51? Are you that eager to please Abby?"

"Ah, Ziva, you clearly underestimate the cunning marketing ploys of American entrepreneurs," he chuckles and walks over to the display to grab a map.

He unfolds it on his way back, and when he shows it to Ziva, she agrees that it's really just like any other map, with a few added landmarks and fancy names on it that cater to the UFO tourism. And it holds the area they're in, too. Hallelujah.

*** *** ***

They're both not comfortable here, in these lifeless remnants of a town. And it would serve no real purpose to stay here any longer: the chances of someone coming along and picking them up are non-existent. They actually agree on that for a change.

Well, mostly. It takes Tony a moment longer to accept it and then study the map with her to try and decide what to do now.

He still wants to go to Vegas, and after she has rolled her eyes for effect and because he expects it of her, she reluctantly agrees. Half of their route will be a straight hike through a lush valley, and yes, it will take them several days, but it's a goal at least, a way out. Because maybe they're lucky and this weird zone, this strange sepia fog that looks like a dust storm, doesn't extend past the mountain range. She doesn't remember her physics class well enough for a solid theory, but she thinks Abby could explain really well right now why chances are good that this is a localized phenomenon.

If she's wrong, they will have to rethink their strategy. Until then, they'll keep walking.

*** *** ***

At one point she has to admit to herself that she has been waiting for Tony to run out of steam for a while now, just so she can have a pause. That's simply what his role in their tiny family is most of the time -- he's the whiny child on a family trip, and usually he keeps whining until he gets either a break or ice cream or attention. Or whatever it takes to make him shut up. 

So yes, she expects him to tire first, and she keeps setting one foot in front of the other stubbornly, all the time waiting for a mock repetition of _'Are we there yet?'_ or maybe a long-suffering sigh that reminds her he's not used to traveling this far on foot and he could use some chill time now, thank you very much.

But his usual, less-than-subtle signs never come, and at one point, when she turns her head to look at him, she realizes that night could fall and he would still keep pushing on. He doesn't like this place any better than she does.

She stops, and he mirrors her, and while he watches her and she rubs her eyes tiredly, he suddenly nods and then turns toward a row of bushes lining the farmland. It will provide at least the semblance of protection, and he's right, she can't go much further, is in fact close to falling flat on her face from exhaustion. And yes, instead of true nightfall this place just stays like a goldfish bowl filled with sepia fog the whole time. But the light _has_ grown considerably dimmer at least, and she supposes that's a sign that they made it past sundown without really noticing it. No wonder she's tired.

She sighs and watches him vanish between the low bushes. Then she follows his lead and drags her feet along, and she tells herself that it's just a little further, just a few more steps.

At least today.

*** *** ***

Fire still works -- they discovered that rather spectacularly when Tony played around with a lighter at the store and almost singed off half of his face during the process. 

So yeah, it works, but it works quite differently. They hesitate to use it for another reason than unpredictability, though. The mere thought makes them feel too vulnerable, and some primal parts of their brains remind them that they can't be sure what they will attract with the seeming comfort of a campfire.

She's taken a shirt out of her backpack and bunched it up into a makeshift pillow, and usually that's enough for her, but not today, somehow. It feels too weird to be the one going to sleep while someone else keeps watch. (She was never good at that, especially during her Mossad days.) But Tony allows no argument. He just stares at her with a forced neutral expression and repeats that he can't sleep anyway. He still has too many thoughts running around in his head, so he might as well take first watch. No sense in both of them not getting any rest.

Reluctantly, she agrees and curls up on the ground, but she can't close her eyes just yet. His gaze is heavy on her, and for a second her heart stutters before it rights itself again. She's used to that by now. These days, it no longer affects her as much as it used to, and so she just curls up a little tighter while she keeps watching his face. 

Being with Ray has, for a while, helped to distract her from the way her own partner sometimes distracts her, and Tony, in turn, being focused on another woman... well, at least it brought less distractions to deal with. 

No. If she were to be honest, Ziva would have to admit that she actually likes how it has changed other things between them, too. How it has brought them to sharing personal things with each other more easily, even if they were talking about other people and other relationships. There is more trust between them these days. And for once, it is acknowledged.

She shifts and tries to find a more comfortable spot on the ground, and she fails and grimaces. To her surprise she finds that her body misses the desert heat they have started their day with. It changed to something just this side of warm soon after they found themselves in this weird zone, and now, with equivalent of night around them, it drops even further. And now that she's no longer moving, she can't help but notice the coolness, especially when a slow shiver runs down her back that makes every single hair on her body stand on edge.

She blinks when Tony suddenly gets up as if he forgot something. Then he bends over her, and she looks up at him with mild confusion on her face. He doesn't react, just unzips the jacket that matches his sweatpants, slips out of it and drapes it over her, and she stares at him while he moves back to his side of the clearing. This time, she can really feel her heart stumble all over itself. Her pulse suddenly beats harshly in her throat, and she watches him with wide eyes, so confused and so very much attracted to him all of a sudden. These are the moments when he gets her right in the gut, so hard and so unexpectedly that she can't help reacting to him. And that's a thing she will probably never get used to.

He shrugs at her expression and says, "I'm not cold." She keeps watching him closely, but he's telling the truth, he looks a lot more comfortable than she is right now, and so she accepts the offering and draws his jacket tighter around herself. 

It's still warm from his body, and her skin suddenly itches, not in the bad way, more like a sudden need to touch _him_ and not just his clothing rises in her. She curls her fingers into the fabric, and while she clothes her eyes, she breathes in his scent deeply. It's the first thing in here that doesn't smell stale and washed out.

She falls asleep with the distinct feel of his presence around her, and that, at last, is something very familiar. She appreciates it.

*** *** ***

A soft voice tickles the back of her mind, and she wakes with a start. For a moment she isn't sure if she really heard someone speak or if it was just a dream. Then she turns her head and looks at Tony, and he watches her in return and mouthes "Sorry" at her, very softly. No dream then. She wonders what he said. It felt vaguely familiar, like she should know it.

She sits up and stretches her cramped muscles. Apparently, she is no longer used to making do with such sparse sleeping arrangements. (But she will not tell him that, of course.)

Her shirt rides up while she raises her arms above her head, and his eyes flick down to the expanse of skin she's showing. She feels like grinning smugly, and so, when she gets up on her feet, she stretches some more. She's not sure why she's in the mood of giving him a little show, but she is, and when she bends over and touches her toes, his face says all too clearly he enjoys that a lot, thank you very much. He's easy to read in that regard, at least.

She knows she shouldn't tease him like that. It was really good during the early years, when all that was between them was fun and games and competition. These days, it's no longer as it was back then. There seems to be so much more involved, and at a higher cost. But if she were to examine her motivations a little more closely, she'd have to admit that she actually likes capturing his attention like this. It's been such a long time since he has looked at her the way he does right now, and she had begun to think that she was no longer desirable to him. That she was more like (or less than) a sister to him. She needs to get used to his curious gazes and the interest shining in them all over again, but she's trying.

It's not that hard an adjustment, really. But it's still fresh and recent enough to make her attention perk up and leave her skin tingling a little.

His eyes follow her when she eventually straightens and sighs and then comes over to sit beside him on the trunk of a fallen tree. He's holding one of the alien jerky packs, and for a moment she wonders why. He's Tony, yes, but even he can't be hungry again already? Then she realizes that he's been using the shiny foil back of it as a replacement mirror, to check out his face. His eyes.

She blinks slowly. Lets her gaze travel along his stubbly jaw, his cheek bones, and eventually meets his stare. Maybe it's because she hasn't slept all that long, but it feels like she is almost getting used to the glow. It still looks toxic and not normal, but it suits him, somehow. And it certainly suits the strange atmosphere of this place.

"You shouldn't think so hard," she murmurs and taps her fingertips against the back of his hand, once, twice. To her own surprise, she finds her voice so warm and affectionate it is almost telltale. She blames the stress and hopes he won't notice. "You need some sleep, too."

He grimaces and stuffs the jerky pack into the deep unknowns of his backpack. "Yeah, well, I can't help it," he mutters. He sounds almost defensive, and for a moment Ziva feels the strong urge to ruffle his hair and mess with it. Him. Both, maybe. "This is not normal, Ziva. I just _have_ to try and come up with a logical explanation for this, you know?" He shrugs and leans a little closer to her during the motion. It's another reflex they have both developed these days. "It drives me nuts."

She nods. She certainly doesn't feel the same need -- she's never been trained for that, after all -- but she knows why he does, and so she looks down at her boots and purses her lips. 

"So what do you think?" she asks eventually.

He looks at her warily and then decides she's not mocking him, but seriously indulging him for once. "Don't roll your eyes at me now," he says cautiously, and that's enough to make her pick at her fingernails because he really knows her too well, "but I keep coming back to Area 51. It's the only solution that sounds even remotely logical."

Ziva blinks slowly while he raises his hands in an _"I know, I know"_ gesture. "I won't roll my eyes," she replies carefully. (It irritates her that he called her on that one.) "But I will tell you that it's not logical by any chance. And it's too... science fiction for me to accept."

"Ziva," he says and cocks his head, and that alone is enough to make her frown. "I hate to burst your Little Miss Normal bubble here, but have you looked at _your_ face lately? That's one big special effect you got going on there, baby." When she still looks at him doubtful, he leans even closer into her personal space. This time it's intentional. "Seriously? You can accept ghosts and chimeras, but not science?"

She resists the fleeting temptation to reach up and touch her own face. She knows what effect he means, no need to confirm it. The unnaturalness is obvious to her the whole time, in the weird sepia tint the world has taken on and the way it eats away colors. The way Tony's shadow seems to lag behind a little at times, especially when he's moving fast. The way his eyes literally flicker when he blinks and his lids dull the green glow for the fraction of a heartbeat.

It's too obvious to ignore, even for her.

She holds his gaze for a second longer, then looks away. Her fingers twist around each other, and she bites her lip before she says, "I know. You made me watch a movie like this once."

"Yeah," he replies, draws out the word, and from the tone of his voice she can tell he's not sure if he should be proud of her for picking up on it or creeped out because she sees it, too. "'Silent Hill'. Totally fits the bill. Except less demons so far. And we haven't reached the ending yet, so we're not at the part where they get home and the little girl isn't the little girl anymore but the demon stuck inside her, and all the time I thought, you're not really home, you're dead like the others, you just don't know it yet."

He runs out of air suddenly, and she looks at him again, sees him with his eyes wide and close to freaking out because now that he spelled it out, it's a lot scarier than just running it around in his own head and treating it as mostly theoretical.

Ziva tilts her head and thinks this through, and because she isn't quite sure if that is what he actually means she asks, "You think we might be dead already? And no longer in the regular world?" And that, despite her training towards open-mindedness, sounds so absurd again, so far from possible, that a frown sneaks onto her face while she's still speaking.

He breathes out slowly. "I don't know," he replies. She catches the quick pinch he gives his hand and forces herself not to copy it. "I suppose it _is_ possible that we died in the car crash." She blinks and glares at him when he instinctively reaches for her forehead and the scratch still visible on it. When he sees her expression, though, he pulls his hand back without actually touching her and shrugs. "Sure sounds more logical than the whole world turning into _this_ all of a sudden, right?"

She hates to admit it, but he's actually starting to make some sort of sense here. Her fingernails dig into her palm out of reflex, and she relaxes a bit when she feels a sharp sting travel up her nerves. Except that pain may not be a clear indication, and so she meets his eyes warily. 

"How do we find out for sure?" she asks, and something flickers across his face, barely noticeable in the almost-darkness. But it's there, and she knows something serious just happened in his head. He just clouds it in humor to hide it like he usually does, and so he gives her a quick grin while he suddenly leans into her so hard that she feels crowded.

"That's easy," he says and tilts his head as if he wants to kiss her. "If I can do _this_ without you kicking me in a very private place..."

Her heart rate suddenly somersaults when she realizes that this time he's _really_ about to kiss her. His lips even come close enough to brush hers. But at the last moment he hesitates and his mouth just hovers there, so close that she can actually feel the warmth coming from his skin. 

She doesn't back away, though, and she can tell he wasn't expecting that. There's no reason to avoid his touch -- or his kiss, for that matter. She's actually a little curious about it, and she wonders what he would taste like. She knows she should remember because she kissed him years ago, but she doesn't, she lost the memory of that sensation somewhere around the time when--

She blinks and turns her head, just a tiny notch so she can look at his face while he still hasn't made up his mind. By now she's almost sure he won't do it, though, and the thought makes her sigh against his mouth. Because, she realizes with a start, she _would_ like a fresh set of memories for this. She'd like him to turn the softest brush of lips he's giving her now into a real kiss. It's probably a really nice sensation to be kissed by him when he means it.

In the end she's right and he pulls back slowly without going through with it. He gives her a slightly awkward grin, and she just watches him quietly, strangely disappointed, while her pulse still thunders in her ears.

"Well," he says and clears his throat. "That wasn't conclusive. There was no kicking."

Her mouth curves into a smile, and despite the fact that he tries to make light of it, she can tell that something else has shifted inside him and changed around the mood for him, too. He doesn't look at her quite as playfully as he did just a few minutes ago, and she knows he's thinking hard again, just no longer about secret experiments and science fiction movies.

"We don't know yet if you need your privates later on," she says with a small shrug and gives him a smile that's half-hidden by the hair falling into her face.

For a heartbeat, he looks like he wants to frown at her because she changed around the rules of the game without telling him. She can tell he's confused by the way she suddenly looks at him, halfway on the road to serious flirtatious. He didn't expect this. And maybe that's exactly the reason she's giving it to him.

He doesn't frown, though, just pulls back in mock horror and fakes shock-widened eyes. "Hey! I'm not re-populating the earth with you!" he states firmly. Ziva laughs at his outburst and winks at him, and that's enough to bring him back to ease and to the way he usually treats her.

When she gets to her feet and turns toward the row of bushes to the North, he looks at her curiously and asks where she's going, and that's such a silly question that she replies, very firmly and rolling her eyes, "I'm going to hunt myself a bear for breakfast."

He laughs and gets it, call of nature and all, and she's already a few steps away when a couple of thoughts click into place and her mind goes back to how he almost kissed her. Suddenly she is the one left with a mystery, and this time she even feels the need to unravel it.

"Tony," she says and stops in her tracks, and when she turns back to him, she finds his gaze on her while his expression says his mind is already on its way back to being distracted. "I'm curious." She hesitates for a heartbeat and stares at his face, wondering if it's a good idea to actually voice this. They never do that, never talk about it, they just never let it happen. 

Then she decides that this is as good a time as any, and if they are in fact already dead, she needs to get this out of her system at least. She missed too many chances already, she can't afford to lose the last one, too. And so she asks, "Why do you never flirt with _me?_ "

He freezes, almost literally. Looks at her as if she just suggested to make out with Gibbs. Just breathes, in, out, while he keeps staring at her. "What?" he finally asks, his voice carefully neutral and implying he may have just misunderstood. It's a nice tactic, and it leaves Ziva torn somewhere between amusement and exasperation. She remembers that sometimes he needs things spelled out as clearly as possible to get an answer out of him, and so she does away with the subtleties for now.

"You have tried out your charms on almost every female agent at NCIS, regardless of partnership status. Almost no woman we meet is safe from it. And yet, you have never made a serious pass at me."

He blinks. Thinks. Frowns and tries to judge her level of seriousness. "I do flirt with you," he says eventually, and it sounds defensive.

"No, you don't," she replies without thinking twice about it, and while his frown deepens, she realizes that she is actually right about this one. "You give me crap, you mock me, you shove me around and you touch me inappropriately, but you never seriously tried to flirt with me. Why?"

He blinks some more. It's disconcerting to see his glowing eyes flicker like Morse code. He's thinking really hard now, and she sees a dozen conflicting emotions flash across his face. It leaves him wide open and very honest for a change, but instead of actually answering her question, he eventually opts for asking one in return. "How would you have reacted if I'd tried?"

She's tempted to tell him the truth: that she wouldn't have minded. Just like she wouldn't have minded his kiss a few moments ago. That there had been times when she would have welcomed it. Where she had longed for it, even. 

But the idea of telling him that suddenly makes her own instincts roar up in panic. Telling him would leave her so very vulnerable, and suddenly she's too insecure about how _he_ would react to that confession. If it would turn things awkward between them. If it would pique his interest or if it would leave him no longer touching her inappropriately.

In the end, she does the same thing Tony usually does: she hides behind a half-truth, because half of it is almost true and because she doesn't endanger anything that way -- not her ego, not their partnership, not their carefully balanced status quo that took so long to establish.

"I'm not sure," she says, and just before his face closes down and goes carefully blank, she sees something very close to disappointment flicker in his eyes.

Then his expression changes to the same one she is used to, the pleasant, non-committal one that usually hides what's really going on inside, and he nods and says, "Yeah. That's why."

She nods, too, and some part of her gets what he's trying to say here. But as she turns and slips away from the clearing, she thinks that _'You first!'_ is a strange game for two grown people to play. 

Suddenly the words that have woken her up earlier spring into her mind, out of nowhere. She turns her head and looks at Tony over her shoulder once more, curious now because she didn't think of him as the type to quote poetry. Granted, it's a horribly overused and trivialized poem, but it does seem strangely fitting right now.

_Tyger! Tyger! burning bright ... In the forests of the night..._

He turns his head and watches her. The green glow of his eyes never wavers, and while she walks on, she decides for herself that most likely they are not dead. Dead people don't feel.


	3. Two

"There's a joke in here somewhere. I just know it," he says as he stops beside Ziva and lets his backpack slide off his shoulder. She turns her head and looks at him, just this side of a glare, and he sighs and hangs his head. "But I'm not gonna make it."

She nods grimly and walks on, past the sign that reads 'Alamo', and he looks away while he tries hard, tries almost desperately to make his brain stop cranking out lame war jokes. He values his various body parts, after all.

Alamo is as much of a ghost town as Crystal Springs was. In fact, if he were asked to do a scary town rating, this one would get the higher one. Crystal Springs has been mostly abandoned even before the... whatever it is they have stumbled into here. Alamo, on the other hand, looks as if it was in the middle of a rather busy day when things happened, and so they see a few abandoned cars in the middle of a road. Some seem to wait for a signal that won't come. They're not parked. They have -- much like their own -- simply stopped functioning. One has slammed hard into the front of a house. There are no tire marks that suggest the driver tried to get it under control. There's also no sign of said driver. No blood, no nothing.

The doors on all cars they see are closed. It doesn't even look like anybody was in them, and sure, he may be wrong about it because maybe the owners locked them after they got out. But it still _looks_ as if both drivers and passengers have just vanished into thin air, and that's what creeps him out pretty fast.

At one point they pass a blue sedan, and Tony's stomach drops a little when he sees a leather briefcase sitting innocently in the passenger seat. The key's still in the ignition, and a cup of coffee has spilled its contents all over the driver's seat. He glances at Ziva and finds her busy frowning. Her tense expression scares him a little. At least he's not imagining things and something strange _is_ going on.

The whole town is like that -- abandoned, dead, as if all the people in it suddenly decided to get up and leave everything behind without giving it a second glance. There's not a single living thing left, not even a yard dog barking at them. And yet Tony sometimes sees shadows move out of the corner of his eye. Most move slowly, but some are jerky, like they are ready to attack at the slightest deviation from the road, the barest move to the wrong side of the street. With each step through the slightly foggy sepia streets he's reminded of 'Silent Hill' again, just without the ash rains, and after a while it makes every hair on his body stand on edge. (He even longs for McGee at one point. He would love to call him and ask for a walkthrough.) It's not really his thing, being in this creepy world all alone except for his partner.

Except that they're not really alone. Something is still here, and he's not exactly sure what it is. It's not really alive in the traditional sense of the word, but it's still a presence, something that grates against his senses like the spark of a dying battery. It tickles the back of his mind and leaves him more and more nervous with each step until he stops in the middle of the street and looks around, wondering what the fuck is going on here.

"Do you feel that?" he asks, and Ziva, a few steps ahead of him, stops dead in her tracks and glances back at him over her shoulder.

"Feel what?"

He blinks and wonders if maybe he's been imagining things after all because usually she is so fine-tuned that she notices more stuff than Gibbs, and if she doesn't feel it now... Then her shadow stretches on the ground and flickers even though the light hasn't changed a bit, and no, it's not a figment of his imagination, definitely not.

Ziva watches his face, and after a while her forehead settles into a frown. "What is it?" she asks, and he suddenly wants to kiss her, sort of, because she doesn't feel a thing, but she still trusts him like that. Trusts his gut. And since he wants to give her a good, solid answer now, he looks around again and tries to find something he can actually see instead of just his creepy gut feeling.

He has to give up eventually because he's not yet ready to talk to her about restless spirits, and there's nothing solid he can point to. "I'm not sure," he says and grabs his backpack tighter. He feels like running. He doesn't even care where to, as long as it includes both 'out of here' and 'fast'.

But it the end he's still the Senior Field Agent, and so he presses his lips together and starts moving again, brushing past his partner while she is still standing in the middle of the street, confused, concentrating and trying to get a glimpse of whatever it is that disturbed him.

He still kind of loves her. Not just for that.

*** *** ***

It's a bit like the dream every single kid in the Western world has at one point in their life -- being locked in a mall, free to raid it without repercussions. Except that they're not locked in and they certainly don't do it for the fun, but out of necessity, and unlike kids they don't run down the aisles giddily just because they're completely alone in here. Instead it creeps them out big time.

It's the middle of the day, and from what they've seen so far, there isn't a single human being left in this town, neither dead nor alive.

After a while, that thought picks up momentum, and so Tony finds himself left with just one thought -- thank God there are no corpses. He's not sure he could have dealt with that. (And yes, this is one of the rare moments where he is quite willing to admit being a wimp.)

Navigating the mall is not quite as easy as it would be under normal circumstances. The only light coming in is from the front doors, and that doesn't get them very far, so they hunt around until Ziva discovers candles somewhere. She steps back warily as he takes out the lighter he has pocketed earlier, and yeah, he can't really blame her. He doesn't want to torch his eyebrows either, so he stretches out his arms as far as he can and carefully points the lighter away from them before he flicks it.

It doesn't explode in a flurry of heat like the last time he tried it. Instead, it forces itself out of the lighter slowly, like a little stream of lava, and he stares at the liquid flame rather stupidly while it drops to the floor with a tiny hiss. His brain comes back fast enough to catch the next drop with the candle, and that's when the fire suddenly flares up so hungrily that Tony hesitates to stomp out the puddle on the floor.

He watches in fascination how the fire curls itself around the wick like a living thing, reminding him of a playful kitten. It's quite a show, and he hears Ziva beside him give a weak sound of surprise.

"Yeah," he says and tucks away the lighter carefully. Then he raises the candle higher, and the flame shudders slightly, like a bird ruffling its feathers. _Just one more thing you can't explain, so don't think too hard about it._

He's suddenly very obsessed with holding just the bottom end of the candle, as far away from the lit part as possible and as lightly as he can without dropping it. "Okay," he sighs, watching the flame cautiously. "Where to?"

"Underwear," she says without the slightest hesitation. "Then food."

He grins, and while she rolls her eyes he decides that yeah, he really loves her for the kind of clear, distinct set of priorities she has.

*** *** ***

He mocks her when she picks sleeping bags that can be zipped together. Says she should just do away with the subtle hints and later even that he could keep her warm easily without the help of modern technology. She tries to ignore him, but it isn't easy when she needs to stick close to him because she's stuck in the dark otherwise. (There's no way she's touching one of these candles.)

She packs two large towels and soap -- someone has to think about hygiene, after all -- and he suddenly says "Oh!" and scuttles off to another shelf close by as if she's just given him an excellent idea.

And yes, she has to hide a slight smile when she catches up with him and finds him ogling a pack of throwaway razors like they're salvation incarnate. She has to admit that she wouldn't have thought of that. She's used to her males taking care of their hygiene themselves.

They have to rearrange the contents of their backpacks when they reach the food section. They don't know yet how long they will be on the road like this, and so it makes more sense to pack food instead of unnecessary gadgets that don't work anyway.

Selecting what kind of food to take turns into another mini-challenge. Most of the heavily processed stuff seems to have turned bad overnight, for whatever reason -- the smell from some of the shelves is far from enticing. Canned food is heavy and only good if they don't need to heat it up -- the cozy campfire is, according to Tony, even less of an option now than it was before. In the end, they settle mostly for things like dried meat, pretzel snacks and a whole load of apples and bananas, which are, amazingly, the most fresh and tasty things they have seen all day.

They sit down in the middle of the groceries section to share food right now (one meal less to carry, after all), and Tony sets the strangely slow-burning candle down carefully. The fire still reaches for him and tries to lick his skin, and he glares at it and rubs his wrist while he watches the flame curl back in on itself. It's the visual equivalent of a very girly giggle. Tony is far from amused.

Ziva merely blinks while she stares at the thick sepia shine coming from the candle, and a shudder runs through her when Tony turns his head suddenly to watch her face. His eyes are darker in the candlelight, but they still glow, and there's a strangely livid quality to their green shine now. Like the heart of a campfire that's always moving, changing, erupting in an outburst of crackling flames in one moment and then collapsing back in on itself in the next. She almost expects little sparks to flare up, but that's about as far as the analogy goes.

He tilts his head and leans a little closer to her, and for a moment she imagines that there's a new, strange intensity shining in his eyes.

Then he hands her an apple, and the moment is gone before it began. She's used to that by now.

*** *** ***

It's easy for her to tell when Tony starts to get itchy. He doesn't like to be trapped in this dark building with its unknown depths and hidden corners, and she agrees. It's not a comfortable place. She isn't quite sure what's scarier, though -- the fact that technically there could be something dark and sinister lurking in every corner or the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything left to lurk. So yes, she wants to get out of here as fast as possible, too. She still needs one more stop because she can't spend forever in these clothes, and she had only one spare set packed. It was supposed to be a simple thing, after all -- get in, question a few people, get out. So much for Gibbs's plans.

Tony is hesitant to pick up the weird candle again, but whatever happened in the meantime has changed around the fire's behavior once again. Now it suddenly produces only little puffs of lighted fog that drag behind them until they slowly lose their glow. Ziva eyes the candle warily, and for a moment she wonders what other surprises are left for them to discover.

*** *** ***

She doesn't think when they reach the sports section. She just tries to be practical, and so she grabs a few shirts, a pair of sweatpants and a bunch of panties in roughly her size. She starts to rip off tags while Tony drops his backpack and goes through the men's shirts, and while he's distracted she turns her back to him and peels out of her no longer fresh clothes. He's pickier than she is when it comes to clothing, even in situations like this one, so his attention will be somewhere else long enough for her to change.

Except that he isn't as distracted as she suspected, and so she hears a soft sound in her back suddenly, like a gasp of surprise. And Ziva, with her blouse almost all the way down her back and exposing skin and scars, freezes in the middle of dropping the cloth to the floor because she was stupid enough to forget. Forget that despite the years, they simply are not intimate like that. They're not _that_ kind of partners. Not the kind who undress in front of each other and think nothing about it.

She counts the breaths it takes until he clears his throat (four) and mumbles something that is supposedly an apology, but sounds more like a curse. She listens carefully and waits for his steps to move away before she drops her top, then her pants. Only she's not sure that's actually happening because he feels just as close as he's been four breaths earlier.

She doesn't turn to check if he's still watching her before she slips out of her underwear.

*** *** ***

He takes a few deep breaths when they step out of the mall building, and even though she knows it's just her imagination and the air outside is still as stale and lifeless as it was earlier, it feels a lot less restricting to their lungs.

"What now?" he says eventually. She feels his eyes on her again, but she can't look at him just now. There is a certain tinge to his voice that says his mind is stuck somewhere, and she feels like she can't follow him there because it might lead her somewhere dangerous.

"Listen," he says after a while when there is no reply, and that is what makes her turn her head. "You want to crash in one of the houses for a few hours?" He hesitates and adds, "I mean, in a bed?"

Her pulse pounds a little faster instantly, which is strange because her partner is merely talking about getting sleep, after all. 

She ponders the suggestion for a while. Then she shakes her head and says, "I am... not too fond of that idea."

He nods sharply before she has even finished the sentence, his lips pressed together tightly, and Ziva sees something in his eyes that is almost relief. She is not entirely sure if that is based on his earlier uneasy feeling or if he's not that sure about the idea of sharing a bed with her. She understands the sentiment either way.

*** *** ***

It feels weird to leave town again. Not too long ago a town meant civilization. It meant safety. But after they have slowly made their way back to the edge of Alamo and turn south on the highway again, he realizes that it might be the other way around from now on.

*** *** ***

He finds soon that he develops the habit of staying a few steps behind Ziva, shadowing her. Not because he can't keep up with her (he's doing pretty well there, actually, much to his own surprise) but because it seems safer this way. He feels the sudden need to (literally) have her back. To watch out for the things that lurk behind them while she barges through the unknown in front of them.

Well, okay. That is one reason. The one that sounds chivalrous. The other one he discovers while she bends over to fix something on her boot and he is left staring at her shapely ass in very form-fitting sweatpants.

*** *** ***

It turns into a strangely quiet walk for them when Ziva flat-out refuses to respond to both movie references and further speculations on the nature of their situation, and so he concentrates on pushing himself onward after a while. But even while he steadfastly puts one foot in front of the other and constantly fights his own nature to complain about it, he is so enamored by the mystery this place presents that his mind seems to stumble all over itself at times.

He still isn't used to the weird colors. The dark sepia tint of the current world reminds him of an old, weathered photograph, and the lighter parts of the landscape, formerly merely dust and asphalt, look just as faded out as if they had been shot a hundred years ago and were now worn down to just a few visible lines.

The way his eyes now see shadows and sudden movement is much worse, though. A few leaves dance across the highway even though there is no real wind, and he finds himself staring at them with wide eyes, trying to wrap his mind around the way their shadows drag along slower than the leaves, only to fast-forward all of a sudden and snapping back into place. It's like a video recorded on a faulty hard drive, and while it's played back it jumps and jerks all over the place.

Or maybe they are just stuck in a Japanese horror flick. He's never heard of one that's set in Nevada, but you never know. They do fucked-up special effects like that a lot.

He blinks when Ziva stops moving for a moment and the shadows in her ponytail curl around her neck. His skin erupts in sudden goose bumps.

God, he can't wait to get out of this.

It's funny, really, because this is the moment where he suddenly realizes they might not. That they have no way of telling how far they will have to walk until this rift in the normal world ends. _If_ it will end.

"Ziva," he presses out while he stops dead in his tracks, and she turns and looks at him. She looks worn out, and there are tiny lines around her eyes he has never seen before. "What do we do if the whole world is like this now?"

*** *** ***

They are the first words he has said to her in at least an hour, and she freezes when she hears them -- literally, because she finds herself standing still so carefully that her shoulders hurt from the sudden tension rolling through them. And metaphorically, because suddenly she can't breathe anymore, can't move, can't even think.

She stares at him with suddenly wide eyes and tries to imagine how it would be if they had to walk all the way back to DC. That thought alone is enough to make her chest ache with sudden anxiety. But what indeed if they reach home only to find that it is like this, too? That there is no one left except them and a few angry spirits?

Her breathing kicks back in, and she takes a lungful of air so fast that she is close to hyperventilating. 

It's just too much. Too hard to even try and imagine this magnitude of things. Her mind isn't cut out for this. She's never been trained to look at the big picture like that, and for a moment she feels so overwhelmed by it all that she decides to take a page out of Tony's book -- to bask in blissful, willful ignorance.

"We'll see once we reach the end of it," she replies and turns back to the road.

*** *** ***

He isn't good at taking subtle hints, though. Or, well, any hints at all. Because yes, he's following her, but he refuses to shut his mouth. He keeps pouring out suggestions and throwing theories at her, now that he thinks he has her attention, and the more she tries to ignore his rambling, the more he actually gets under her skin with it.

He makes her itch in the worst possible way, and his words rub up and down her spine until she can't take any more of it. So she stops and drops her backpack, and when she turns towards him, she sees that he's suddenly standing still, too, eyeing her warily.

"Tony," she says, and he jumps a little at the unnerved tone in her voice. He watches her while she stalks closer and draws herself up to her full height before she gets in his face. "Just... shut up."

He stares at her, blinking slowly, his pretty lips slightly parted as if he was just in the middle of objecting. She wonders what it would take to quiet him if he doesn't stop on his own. She can think of several ways, some more effective, others more pleasant. (That thought alone is a fresh distraction in itself.)

Then he says, "I can't", and her eyes flick up to meet his. His face is so serious all of a sudden that it sends a shudder down her spine, and while she watches him silently, a frown marring her face, he leans a little closer to her and adds quietly, "I'm not you."

She tilts her head and looks at him, and his expression turns confused when she doesn't react right away. She can't blame him. She's confused herself. 

Part of her wants to get angry and yell at him until he apologizes for once. It's a gut reaction. She can't help feeling offended because she was so sure that they were finally past thinking of her as a brainless machine.

The reason she doesn't yell is the part of her that isn't angry. At least it's not Tony making her angry. It's her own feelings and emotions and sometimes, the lack of them. It's the part of her that feels ashamed. 

Because in the end he's saying that his reactions are the more normal ones -- her lack of obvious concern isn't. And if she counts it all, he is right: she isn't normal in that regard.

*** *** ***

It's already getting closer to nightfall when they stop for a short while to relieve themselves. With any other girl he would have had a lot more of these breaks, but Ziva usually isn't the one to ask for this, she just takes the ones he offers. (He hasn't figured out yet how she does that.)

He flops down on the ground with a moan and rubs his calves while she sets her backpack down and starts rummaging around in it. He's really not used to this much physical exercise, and by now his body complains loudly about the stress he's putting it through. His feet hurt, and for the past hour he's always felt just this side of a leg cramp.

He watches Ziva while she finds what she's looking for and then, trophy in hand, vanishes into the bushes alongside the highway. (He's still sort of in love with her for the simple fact that she thought about snagging two rolls of toilet paper back in Alamo.) The branches tremble behind her, snapping back into place as soon as she is gone, but the shadows in them float around restlessly for a little while longer until they settle again. Darker ripples run over the bark of a fallen tree, and he's not sure if they just did that on their own or if a slight wind moved them. He can't feel anything, but that doesn't surprise him. For some reason the wind in here works differently, too -- it pushes around leaves and dust and dead bushes constantly, but he still hasn't felt it on his skin once. He has no idea how that is actually possible, but it's like the fire -- nature has developed new rules.

It doesn't even take a minute until Ziva is back, and at first he is impressed because that was a damn fast pee, even with her ninja skills. Then he sees her face, pale and tense in a weird way, and he's up on his feet and asking her what's going on before she has reached him.

"You need to see this," she says and motions for him to follow her when she turns back towards the row of bushes.

She lets him catch up, then turns left and ducks under a branch. She doesn't warn him, and so he stumbles and almost doubles over when his vision suddenly clears up and his lungs fill with the kind of air he hasn't tasted in two days. He coughs and bends over, one hand on his thigh, and then he takes another deep breath. His brain feels fuzzy from the onslaught of richly flavored oxygen, and it takes him a moment until he can move again and look around.

His eyes need to readjust even more. They burn and water as if he just walked in on dinner burning. He turns his head and looks at Ziva and sure enough, she's no longer glowy. Her skin is back to the caramel tone he is used to, too. The tips of her ponytail are draped over her shoulders, strangely lifeless and flat all of a sudden because the intense shadows have seeped out of them. She's breathing hard when she raises her chin and looks at him, and yeah, he gets it, his own pulse is tripping over itself, too.

His brain picks this exact moment to kickstart, but it still takes a few seconds until it really sinks in that this is the old world. The real world, the normal one. This is how they started out their week and not the creepy zone that steals color and taste.

He takes a few more deep breaths while he looks around, trying not to get too excited about this new development. It's not like they have already reached the end of it. They're just standing in a small pocket of normal space, just a few feet wide and halfway hidden between the trees. It makes him feel claustrophobic, especially when he watches the walls that confine the weird space: they look like thick sepia dust clouds, piled up on top of each other. And they're not still, they swirl and pulse slowly. He's seen a documentary once, about octopuses that, when in distress, release their ink into the water, and this somehow reminds him of that show. (Abby would freak out with happiness about the reference. And then she'd freak out about the zone itself and go nuts with researching it.)

He tilts his head back to see how far up the cloud walls go, but he can't really see the end of it, just a blue hole in the middle of a lump of clouds. For a second he wonders how this really works. How the boundaries of this weird space define themselves. His brain refuses to go there all the way, though. It just seems too much and too weird and possibly too scientific for him, and after a while he just hums, lost in thought, and scratches his chin.

It isn't until he glances back at Ziva and sees her face lit up with excitement and awe that he realizes what this really means: that there is an end to this disturbance. However far they will have to walk to get out of this, it's not the whole world that's affected by it. And there is a good chance they will make it home eventually.

Her eyes sparkle with delight when she looks at him, and for a moment he thinks she's as close to simply hugging him as she'll ever get. Then she grimaces and puts a hand to his chest instead and says, "Okay, I _really_ need to pee now."

*** *** ***

There's a point where she realizes that she isn't used to having him at her back like this.

He's always been there, of course. He's had her six for years. She just never felt his presence so massively before, and while she finds that most of the time it is comforting in its own way, it is also weirdly distracting, up to the point of almost overpowering her senses.

She's not sure why she is suddenly sidetracked by him so easily. She has several theories, starting with the most obvious one: that maybe she just concentrates too hard on his presence. 

She can't help it, though. He radiates protectiveness, even while he is getting tired and starts concentrating very hard on just putting one foot in front of the other. She knows he's keeping constant track of their surroundings, much like she does. She also knows that the better part of his attention is trained on her, and even though she has never minded that before, it turns into a big distraction for her own senses all of a sudden.

She tries to ignore it as best as she can, but at one point she can't help it and stares back at him over her shoulder. And for some reason Tony, of course, looks up at exactly the same moment to meet her eyes.

He looks so tired and drained right then that she feels a wave of concern rise in her. Even the glow in his eyes seems to swirl slower than it did before, as if that sparkle needs a certain level of energy, too.

Ziva stops walking and waits for him to catch up. She knows that he's fit enough to stay at her side. That he just chose to stay behind and cover her. But by now it shows that he simply isn't used to something as strenuous as this, and when she sees his face and the lines around his eyes that seem a lot deeper than they did yesterday, she realizes that she actually forgot for a while that he isn't trained for this kind of thing.

"What?" he asks quietly when he comes up beside her.

And that's another thing she hasn't expected - the silent, stoic way in which he takes on the physical part of this. Granted, he has annoyed her massively with his endless speculation about the hows and whys of their situation, but he still hasn't complained once about the many miles they have covered on foot over the past couple of days. 

She remembers how he was when they had the power outage in DC, and the Tony she looks at right now is so far from the one back then that it surprises her. Maybe because right now, he reminds her a lot more of Gibbs than the Tony she has gotten used to.

"Nothing," she says and runs a hand across her face. Her hair feels weird when she pushes it out of her eye, too soft and almost moist. "Do you need a break?"

He breathes slowly, carefully, and she can tell the question actually tempts him. His eyes look even more tired all of a sudden, and the lines around them seem to deepen while she looks at him. As if the energy that has kept him going so far seeps out of him fast, now that he stops pushing on, even if it is only for a moment.

His gaze drops to her mouth when she licks her lips nervously, and for some reason she suddenly feels heated and flushed. She looks away, avoiding his eyes, and so she can't tell if he noticed her brief moment of girly distraction.

His gaze remains heavy on her, though, and with each second that passes, her pulse picks up a bit more speed until she starts to get really nervous. But just as her lips part to say something she hasn't planned, he adjusts his backpack and takes another step forward.

"Not yet."

Her eyes follow him as he walks past her. She has trouble remembering the last time she heard his voice this tired and drained.

*** *** ***

He says her name at one point -- only that, nothing else, but it's enough that she stops dead in her tracks. He sounds too urgent and too tense to ignore it, and just like that, her instincts, dulled by the monotonous walk, roar back to full power. She glances around but doesn't see anything, and so she turns to look at Tony.

His face is strangely tense, and she wonders what caught his attention. The highway doesn't look any different to her than it did an hour ago -- it's still all dusty and fogged over like a movie set with decidedly weird special effects. She strains her senses, but she doesn't see or hear anything out of the ordinary. 

"Tell me," she murmurs, and his eyes narrow while his gaze scans the landscape.

"Not sure," he replies eventually. His right hand twitches as he moves it closer to his Sig. "I think we're not alone."

It takes a moment until the meaning of his words really sinks in, and when it does, an icy shudder runs down her back. They haven't seen a single living thing since they ended up in this rift (she's not desperate enough yet to count plant life) so if Tony's hunch is right...

Her eyes dart all over the place suddenly, and Tony closes the distance between them until she clearly feels his presence, almost overwhelming in its comfort. Right then, at that single moment, she is incredibly glad she isn't stuck in here with McGee.

He's right behind her left shoulder now, so close that he almost touches her, and for a heartbeat she has to fight the urge to simply lean back against him and soak up a little of his strength. She takes a deep breath and tries not to close her eyes because she is pretty sure that would make her give in too easily. And this -- like many others before -- simply isn't the right moment.

She flinches when she hears something rustle in the bushes just off the side of the road, and her pulse hammers faster even before she sees the beast. 

In a former life, in a different world, it was a mountain lion, and it wasn't exactly something one would call harmless, but it certainly never cared enough about humans before to attack them. Now, Ziva isn't so sure about that. Because what now crawls towards them is no longer an ordinary mountain lion. It's a ragged, confused and scared creature that hasn't eaten in too long. And it's been in here just as alone as they have been so far, without prey and without another living thing to keep it sane.

It certainly doesn't look sane, with its eyes glowing in bright neon yellow and its neck hairs bristling while it slowly sets one paw in front of the other, watching them, waiting for their first move. Ziva knows that cats usually retract their claws, but this one's are out and scratch the asphalt, and that's like a drawn weapon, threatening them. 

Her pulse somersaults while she watches the animal inch closer, curious, strangely unsure what to do with them now that it caught up with them. She wants to do something -- anything, really -- but for some reason she can't understand she has never felt so helpless before. It freezes her up and chokes her until a shudder runs through her. 

Her breath catches in her throat, and the tiny sound is enough to make the lion's head snap around and focus its attention on her. The beast watches her with its head moving slowly from left to right as if it has trouble seeing her clearly. (She knows that's deceptive. It's not blind at all.) Its flews twitch as it draws them back and tastes the air in that weird way cats sometimes do, and for a heartbeat Ziva feels something close to a scream tighten her throat.

She doesn't scream. It's not in her nature. But she watches the beast with panic rising inside her, and the urge to run almost overwhelms her.

She's frozen stiff when the lion flexes its muscles experimentally, and Ziva knows it's not really like her to react like that. She's been trained to deal with almost every event possible, and she has been in most of them and in much more dangerous situations than this one. She knows that. Knows that her reflexes are still sharp enough to get her out of this situation easily.

And yet, this is different from the bombs and the terrorists and knives at her throat. 

Humans she can deal with easily. She's done it all her life. But this, this a primal force -- this is nature, in all its danger and glory, and even though she vividly remembers the days her father used to take her to the woods, back when Tali was still by her side, she feels incredibly helpless all of a sudden. A deer frozen in the terror of headlights.

There's movement in the corner of her eye, and Tony's presence suddenly flares up against her senses, erupts into something tangible and dangerous enough to equal the animal. She hears the soft click as he releases the safety catch, and she glances at him while he raises his arm slowly. He aims very carefully, and she knows he's trying not to provoke the lion into attacking, but he seems so unnaturally controlled that, again, she feels the need to lean into him, maybe even hide behind him. She doesn't, of course, but it takes almost more effort than facing the mountain lion does.

Tony keeps radiating safety at her side, and she wonders why he isn't frozen like she is. She has rarely seen him this calm and controlled, and for a moment that heightens her panic into something choking her.

"Easy," he murmurs and moves closer to her, his gun still trained on the lion, and Ziva swallows hard. She's not entirely sure if he's talking to her or the animal.

The beast, unlike her, chooses to ignore the command and focuses on Tony, dismissing the prey in favor of the threat for the time being. At some point in her life -- she is pretty sure about that -- she has heard that in situations like these you should rather stand your ground than run because running is what turns you into a potential meal in the eyes of a predator. But now that she feels a bead of sweat run down her neck she has to wonder how much of that is actually true. The lion certainly doesn't look like it cares much about the rules of the food chain right now.

She can't help but flinch when Tony suddenly takes a step forward. He still aims for the animal, and the lion takes that as the act of aggression it is and bares its teeth in an angry snarl. Ziva's eyes widen, and it's almost a good thing she can't move because all she wants to do by now is run screaming.

The beast hisses again, and Ziva watches its hackles rise and its muscles tremble while it copies Tony and takes a step towards them. The yellow fire in its eyes flares up as it drives its claws into the ground with a snarl, and Ziva's eyes flick to its heaving flanks, watching for the telltale tightening of muscles just before the jump. Her heart pounds in her throat, and adrenalin washes over her.

Tony, though -- he is still so calm and quiet beside her, and she doesn't get it. His breath comes just a hint faster than normal, and a quick glance shows her that he's watching the lion curiously, a slight tilt to his head as if he's suddenly distracted by something. She wants to scream at him to just shoot, just make it go away, but she's still stiff with fear and can't act, and so she just keeps standing there, shaking, breathing hard, sweat dripping down her back. 

The tiny hairs on her arms rise as her skin tightens painfully, and she's not sure if that is from the tension inside her or the weird energy that suddenly crackles in the air and leaves it charged, much like the air feels just before a thunderstorm breaks loose. The lion feels it, too, and it bares its teeth again.

Tony suddenly mutters something rude beside her, and yes, she shares the sentiment because the lion's muscles now bulge in a way that has nothing to do with getting ready to jump. Its claws shred the asphalt, and Ziva blinks when little sparks of energy dance in the dust it stirs up. She frowns, not sure if her eyes deceive her, but they don't, the miniature lightning strikes are actually there, licking all across the mountain lion's paws. And really, it should be bothered by it. Should jump and snarl and try to get away from the sensation, because that can't be pleasant, right?

Except that it isn't bothered. It just growls and keeps kicking the dirt, keeps digging its claws even deeper. Energy lines travel up its legs and sneak through its pelt like tame fireflies. And Ziva isn't sure if she's just imagining it, but it suddenly looks as if the beast actually likes that. Maybe because it no longer looks quite as rugged and starved as it did a couple of minutes ago.

Her pulse begins to race even faster. She has never been scared by things that were hard to explain with common knowledge before (it's been part of her training after all), but this is something that freaks her out badly. She's never seen an animal feed like this: gorging itself on pure energy.

And this is where she finally takes a step back. Slowly, carefully, but backing away nonetheless.

Tony beside her is still eerily quiet and stares at the lion like she does, except that for a change he seems to be the one who keeps a cool head. He just watches the snarling, hissing beast with that curious look on his face, much like the one he sometimes gives her when she does something that deeply puzzles him. And then he does something she hasn't expected: he lowers his gun.

Her lips part, and she wants to tell him not to be stupid, but she doesn't get the words out. She can only stare at him with her eyes wide while his whole stance relaxes, even though the lion growls at him like rumbling thunder now. 

She sees Tony's eyes narrow, and for a heartbeat it looks as if there's a spark of the same energy dancing in his pupils that the beast's scratching claws keep drawing from the ground. Right then, she isn't entirely sure if it's still the lion that scares her more.

"Go," he mouthes and jerks his chin to the side, and Ziva flinches when the lion bares its teeth in defiance. And then, just like that, it suddenly ducks to the side and vanishes into the bushes again, its tail swishing left and right angrily. 

Ziva's pulse jumps to a sharp staccato. She has no idea what just happened here, and so she looks at Tony for a clue. Her thoughts feel all tangled up while he tucks away his gun, and Ziva shudders again, her hands clenching and unclenching, her eyes wide and confused and fixed on her partner, who now turns around and looks at her with a somewhat crooked smile and a little less tension in his shoulders.

"I guess it bought the Gibbs impersonation," he says, and his expression turns vaguely embarrassed now, as if he isn't sure himself just how exactly he did that. Then he gets a good look at Ziva's face, and what he sees disturbs him. Suddenly he's right by her side and in her face. She takes a deep breath when he raises his hand and touches her cheek in a way that isn't familiar enough yet to take it in stride. "You okay?"

She wants to say, yes, of course, but she can't form the words, can't bring them over her lips, so she just nods and tries to move back to a safer distance. But it's a weak gesture, and he sees through it easily. His hand sneaks to her neck and keeps her from stepping away, and she feels even more confused when he lowers his head to get a better look at her face. For a second she thinks he wants to kiss her, and her pulse pounds against his palm while she stares at him with wide eyes. She's suddenly scared and incredibly vulnerable again, but this time it's for a whole different set of reasons. Only Tony doesn't know that, and so he just feels her heart pound and sees the shock in her eyes while she battles the temptation of simply leaning into him. 

His fingers are strong in her neck, and that doesn't calm her breathing down. "Ziva," he says softly, radiating concern, and that, finally, helps her snap out of it.

"I'm okay," she says, though not as firmly as she would have liked to, and his face tells her he doesn't really buy it. He still lets go of her, and she turns away hastily and resumes their former path. Her legs are stiff, and it takes her a few steps to fall back into her easy stride. 

Her hands keep shaking for a while longer. Maybe because she still feels the heavy weight of his gaze in her back. He's still watching her, still curious. She can tell. It's almost as palpable as his concern was a moment ago.

She tries to breathe evenly when she passes the point where the mountain lion vanished. She has no clue why it reacted to Tony like that and even less of an idea why her partner didn't just shoot it. Just a shot to scare it away would have been enough, but he didn't even do that, he went into a pissing contest with a force of nature instead. 

And he won.

While he comes up behind her she wonders at which point he has become so dangerous. And so intriguing.


	4. Three

He starts throwing glances to the right not too long after that, and for a while she thinks he senses another animal. But then he suddenly calls her name and wanders off the road, and she gets confused again when she follows him into a row of bushes on a downhill slope.

When she catches up with him, he stands very still and stares at a patch of air that shimmers weirdly in front of him. "I thought it felt familiar," he says and raises his hand, and for a moment she wants to tell him to be careful. Then she realizes that he's right, this is how the small pocket of normal space she has found earlier looked from the outside -- or inside, really. Depends on how to view it.

He turns his head just before he actually touches the disturbance, and when he sees her anxious face, he suddenly gives her his best charmer's grin and reaches for her. She hesitates for the tiniest moment. Then she takes his hand and turns toward the waver in the air. Her skin tingles when they step through it together.

*** *** ***

It's just another pocket and not really the end of the weird zone, and when Ziva realizes that she feels a lot more disappointed than she had thought she would. Granted, it's a lot bigger than the last one (there's half a lake in it this time), but it's still just a rest stop, a small insertion of normal space, teasing them with the world they left behind.

Tony's face shows the same expression that is probably on her own right now -- a mix of fatigue, disappointment, and a hint of annoyance. For some reason she feels the need to press his hand once, reassuring him before she lets go, and that makes him look at her with a slightly surprised smile. It's a nice smile, genuine, and for a moment her heart flutters like a trapped sparrow. Then she looks away and stares at the lake instead, and that helps.

It's a beautiful landscape, that much is sure. Not something she would have expected in Nevada. It's so far from desert that the contrast makes her head spin a little, and while she slowly walks down the soft slope of the hill, she wonders if Tony would look at her weirdly if she were to ask him to spend the night here. It's still hours from nightfall, after all, and it wouldn't be reasonable to waste time like that. But it's still tempting.

She's busy gorging her eyes on the excessive green that threatens to overwhelm her senses when a horribly mutilated punk rock version of an Abba song suddenly starts blaring behind her. She whirls around, heart racing, and Tony grimaces and taps the screen of his cell phone until it falls silent again.

"Sorry," he says and gives her a crooked grin. "Works in here."

It takes a few more breaths until her pulse is back to normal. She watches him anxiously while he waits for a signal, then frowns and raises the phone higher. "No service?" she asks eventually when his scowl deepens.

"Yeah." He sighs, turns the phone off again and tucks it away. There's a weird kind of longing in his face, and yes, she gets that. She knows all too well how he feels.

"Come on," she says and gives him a smile. It's a tiny bit forced, but she sees his eyes light up and knows that he appreciates the effort. "Let's have a picnic."

He laughs then, and this time it's genuine. She's not sure though if he's merely amused by her suggestion or if he likes it.

*** *** ***

They eat in silence, for a multitude of reasons. The place just seems to demand a certain level of respectful silence -- the vast lake, the view across it, the trees curling in thick groups around its edges, it's just too peaceful to disturb. 

And they're both tired by now. Even Ziva feels the stress of the long travel on foot catch up with her. She's tempted to take out her sleeping bag and just have a nap, but there are still too many miles left to cover, and so she concentrates on slowly munching her food while she already dreads the moment where they have to leave.

She isn't even aware that she eyes the lake with so much longing that Tony notices and turns his attention towards her, watching her while he chews on dried meat.

"Wanna have a swim?" he asks suddenly, and she jumps a little, surprised by his suggestion. He gives her that crooked smile again, but he looks a little unsure. It's gone as fast as it has shown up this time and he shrugs instead. "Just sayin'. I'll keep watch while you're in."

She wants to say that they don't have time for that. That they should keep going instead and get out of here as fast as they can. That it wouldn't be sensible to waste time with cleaning up.

But then she looks at the water again, and it looks so cool and refreshing that she feels the way her shirt clings to her back with even more intensity than before.

She knows his eyes are still on her when she stands and slips out of her jacket.

*** *** ***

The water is cooler than she expected it to be. (It's hot in Nevada, after all, even in this not-so-deserty portion of it.) But the rift that surrounds the bigger portion of the lake is also responsible for a drop in temperature, and so, in general, it is just barely below pleasant. It makes goose bumps ripple all over her skin.

The lake is big enough that she can easily swim laps, and her body enjoys that kind of physicality. It's much more effortless than the walking has been so far, and it's incredibly relaxing for both her muscles and her mind.

She knows that Tony is watching her again, and she tries not to care about it, but unlike earlier, she is now painfully aware of the fact that she is naked and that his eyes rarely leave her for more than a few seconds. She's not sure why it feels different from the moment in the mall. Maybe because this is the normal world. The world where they usually pretend to be only friends and sometimes not even that. The world where she's not supposed to undress in front of her partner and he's not supposed to look at her as if the earlier meal hasn't satisfied his hunger.

She finishes the round and drifts on her back for a bit before she comes halfway out of the water to reach for the travel-sized shampoo bottle. She knows she probably shouldn't do this here, that it will spoil the water, but just like the lake itself, the temptation of really cleaning up is just too big.

Tony can't resist, either. While she washes her hair, he has taken out the shaving gear he has snagged earlier and works on getting his face smooth again. To her surprise she finds that she likes watching him shave like this. He concentrates on using the razor, and she enjoys it when he is intense like that. She's always enjoyed that about him -- his ability to focus when it's necessary.

She tilts her head back and rinses the shampoo out of her hair, and when she comes back up, dripping all over like a water nymph, she sees that he has paused scraping his cheeks and watches her again. He meets her eyes and gives her the hint of a smile, then reaches for something that turns out to be a bottle of tequila he probably took back in Alamo. She can't blame him, even though another bottle of water would have been the more sensible choice. She almost shares his need for a drink right now, and she swallows with him when he tilts his head back and takes a good mouthful.

And she finds that it's not just the tequila, really. It's also the way his throat curves and the flecks of foam on it, and the fact that he has taken off his shirt to clean up a little, too. And he doesn't look half bad. Good enough to make her feel hungry, too.

He puts the bottle down, sets it out into her direction and offers it to her before he goes back to putting the finishing touches on his stubbly chin. He almost looks as if he no longer pays attention to her, but she knows he does, she can feel it, and it rubs her raw to have him sneak glances at her out of the corner of his eye. Because she knows that's all he will do, stare and watch and gorge himself on her from afar.

He gets up on his feet when she comes out of the water, and she can tell from the expression fluttering across his face that part of him wants to turn around now and give her some privacy. It's the modest thing to do, after all. But modesty doesn't really stand a chance when she steps towards him slowly, and while he reaches for the towel she has set out earlier, his eyes drop low for a heartbeat to take in her body. She can see it does something for him -- and really, he wouldn't be alive if it didn't. Her skin is wet and tight, and his gaze drops to her hard nipples, lingering there and probably thinking that yes, the water is _that_ cold. But that's only part of the reason. She finds that right now she is simply eager to let him see her. To give him a good look at what he's been missing out on so far.

He takes a deep, slow breath and forces his eyes back up to hers. There's sudden heat flaring in his gaze, and Ziva's throat is dry when she sees him lick his lips. She's not sure why, maybe just to torture him, maybe to spur him into action, but she ignores the towel for now and bends down instead, reaching for the bottle of tequila.

It burns her throat, and she barely manages to get the sip down without coughing. He picked pretty potent stuff. When she sets the bottle back down, she's suddenly dizzy, and maybe that's really just the tequila. But maybe it's the fact that Tony is now close enough for her to smell him. 

And he smells so good. Earthy and spicy. She wants to bury her nose in his neck and drink in his scent, and that thought sends another shudder all over her skin.

He's still holding the towel out for her, and she finally takes it and dabs at her hair. Modesty rears its head again and demands to wrap the towel around her body, to go back to the way partners are supposed to behave. But Ziva doesn't cover herself, she just blinks slowly while she watches Tony tilt his head and look at her, and she thinks that maybe modesty should be put on the back burner for now since, in all likelihood, this day could be their last.

He swallows hard when she closes the last of the distance between them and raises the towel to wipe the rest of the foam off his face. The touch is simple, and yet it triggers something in him. His breath suddenly comes in harsh rasps, and his body leans into hers involuntarily, not pressing against her yet, but close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his skin. She stares at his mouth, his pretty lips, and since her palm is already resting against his cheek, it feels only natural to run her thumb across those lips. _Soft._ He shudders underneath her touch, and she isn't sure when he came so close. And she doesn't care, really, she just wants him to stay like that. Close.

He clears his throat, and his lips move against her thumb until she feels her own body react to the unintentional caress, the words that translate directly into sensation. "Is it too late to start flirting?"

There's that hint of a grin again, the one he usually gives her to make his words seem less important than they are. Except this time it doesn't work because he can't hide the raw hunger in his eyes, can't hide the way his body reacts to her hard and fast.

"Yes," she murmurs, and for the fraction of a heartbeat she sees angry frustration flicker in his eyes. Then her lips defy her words and touch his, and he gasps and loses the last bit of restraint that kept him together. He almost crashes into her, with his hand grabbing her hip and his tongue shoving into her mouth hungrily, and she moans and shudders against him in response.

His skin tightens at the sound she makes, and he drags her even closer, one hand on her ass, the other buried deep in her hair, grabbing her neck and holding her right there. He's like a drowning man all of a sudden, and Ziva meets his hunger eagerly, tasting his mouth while she reaches for his pants, pushing them down. She has waited too long for this, and she doesn't care much for patience anymore.

She's not sure how they end up on the ground eventually without hurting themselves, but they do, and he's naked and hard underneath her, that's all that counts right now. His body drives her nuts, even while he just grabs her face and kisses her. It's intense enough to distract her because he fucks her mouth with his tongue (there really is no other word for that), and she groans and lets him take her, losing herself in the sensation until her own need becomes too urgent again, too overwhelming.

Her hand curls around his cock, and he tears his mouth from hers and gasps, his strong hands still grabbing her face while hers slowly ease him into her, just like that, skipping the whole tease and play part and going straight for the endgame. There is no point in waiting. Her body is ready, and she has been for years.

"Fuck," he mutters. His breath is hot against her skin, and she bites her lip because she wants to moan, wants to make more sounds, and she can't do that just yet because she's not sure she could stop again. 

He doesn't share the same reservations, though, he groans shamelessly when she slides down on him. Too slow, really, but she needs to adjust first because he's bigger than she expected. "Oh, fuck, please," he presses out through clenched teeth, and Ziva moans, her body shaking suddenly as she fights her own need to move faster.

His hand tightens in her neck. She feels tension roll through his body, feels his muscles coil, and that's when a whimper flows from her own lips.

"Yes," she whispers, and Tony groans when she slides down and takes him in completely. He still tries to hold back, to let her have control, but he can't stop himself, and so his hips jerk up involuntarily to meet hers. Ziva gasps at the sensation, the sudden tightness, and her fingernails dig into his chest as heat rushes through her. For a brief moment she thinks his size might be painful, but then she finds that no, she doesn't mind how he stretches and fills her. And she can tell he doesn't, either. 

Her eyes flutter shut, and that makes the feeling of him inside her so much more intense that she bites her lip again when she starts to move.

"Oh, God," he moans, and she breathes out and meets his thrusts, a tiny whimper low in her throat. For a heartbeat she's torn between letting go and making it last, but letting go wins out easily, and it doesn't take all that long until she's shaking above him and coming hard. And Tony, Tony just messes with her heart when he wraps his arms around her and just holds on to her while she rides it out.

*** *** ***

He's not sure what it is that drags him out of sleep, but at some point he jerks awake and blinks wearily. Jesus, he actually fell asleep sitting upright against a tree. He really isn't made for this kind of adventure.

He's still so tired. The short rest hasn't done much to counter that, not to mention--

He breathes out slowly, and Ziva's body follows the movement. Her back, very naked, rests against his chest, and the sensation of her, curled up in his arms and with her head tucked under his chin, using him as a pillow -- that's certainly a new one, and for a moment, it's enough to confuse him. 

Right. _That_ happened.

He waits for her to stir, too, but she doesn't, not even when he runs his hand up her arm cautiously. Her breathing is so calm and relaxed that he suspects she's still asleep, and that thought makes him freak out a bit because he's not really sure how she will react when she wakes up. He's rarely sure when it comes to her. At least not when anything even remotely emotional is concerned.

"It's moving," she says, and he jerks in surprise and stares at her. She's not looking at him. She has her head turned to the side and watches something to their right, and when he follows her gaze, he finds that she is staring at the border of the rift. 

Slowly swirling sepia clouds, piled high on top of each other, and yeah, it sure is impressive, but it's not enough to distract him from the sensation of her cheek against his bare chest. She's so warm and soft, and no, it doesn't really look like she wants to jump up and scream bloody murder any time soon. And he likes feeling her like this. A lot.

But Ziva's attention is still fixed on the wall of clouds, and even though she leans into his caress when he runs his hand up her side he can tell it's more like a reflex than a conscious reaction.

"Tony," she says, in the way that means she needs his attention, and he sighs and looks back at the border.

And then he suddenly realizes that she's right. It's at least ten feet closer to them than it was before he fell asleep. It's not just pulsing and wavering. The whole zone is shifting around.

He inhales sharply, and Ziva finally sits up and turns her head to look at him. "We should get going," she murmurs, and even though her words sound very sure, there is suddenly a strangely hesitant flicker in her eyes. And this, he realizes, this is the part where she noticed him being naked, too. Where she probably starts thinking this was a mistake, born out of stress and best forgotten, never to be brought up again.

He reaches for her before she is done avoiding his gaze, and she flinches a little when his palm cups her cheek. Her hair, dried without further attention, is a mass of mad curls, soft against his fingertips, and the sensation distracts him for a heartbeat. 

He wants to say something. Wants to tell her that he doesn't think it was a mistake. That he doesn't mind knowing her like that, all lost in passion. That he certainly won't mind if the topic is brought up again, not just for a repeat performance, but maybe, just maybe, for actually dealing with it, just this once.

He can't, though. His lips part, but his vocal cords don't work with him, and it's just like every time when it's important: he can't put into words that he wants to keep her.

Ziva's eyes widen while she waits for him to say something, and a slight panic rises in his throat when she stays quiet, just looks at him with confusion rising in her gaze, as if she realized just now that things have suddenly turned a lot more complicated between them. But before he can say or do something stupid, like he often does when it counts, she leans forward and kisses him, quick, messy, just pressing her mouth to his. He jumps at the sensation, but while he still isn't done being surprised, the low-throbbing anxiety in his gut is slowly replaced by stunned relief.

Her mouth is warm, and there's a bit of an edge to her kiss, as if it means more than mere physical affirmation. And he knows how that feels. He really does. 

His hands come up to frame her face, but as fast as she started it she breaks the kiss again and leans her forehead against his. Her eyes are closed and her pulse is thrumming against his fingertips. She's breathing a little harder than she did just a minute ago. 

And that is when he really gets it: that neither of them will be able to ignore this. Because much like the rift in the normal world, their partnership is still in flux, and despite the years they haven't learned all the rules yet that go along with it.

*** *** ***

Going back into the rift takes more effort this time. Not physically, since it's still just a simple step forward, but emotionally, and Tony finds to his surprise that he has to force himself to make the step. Part of him just wants to stay in this tiny bubble of normalcy with Ziva until they got this all figured out. Their own little oasis, where they don't need to think about the big stuff and the world-changing events. It seems, in fact, so much easier to not think at all in there.

But yeah, they still have to get out of here, and they still have to find home, and the world has changed, after all. There's no real choice for them.

His skin prickles when he steps back into the sepia clouds, and he wants to scratch himself because it doesn't feel too comfortable. His eyes take a little longer to adjust this time, maybe because they were out of the zone for a while.

Ziva watches him cautiously. She hasn't really said anything since she got dressed, and that is one reason why he can't figure out the expression she gives him now. Her eyes glow in dark amber again, and that doesn't help either.

She licks her lips suddenly, and for a moment he thinks, that's it, there will be words coming out now to make all of this easier. But just like him, she's still at a loss for them, and so she turns back towards the highway and starts walking again. 

He really wants to grab her arm and hold her back and kiss her again, just to make sure they're still on the same page. (And maybe to find out if she tastes the same in here.) He doesn't go through with it, though, and some part of him wonders why. Can't be that hard, right?

*** *** ***

He's not entirely sure which one of them pushes harder. He just knows that at one point his feet hurt like hell and his thighs cramp every other mile and the sepia fog around them has gotten so dark that he has trouble making out the damn highway. Even Ziva has slowed down by now, and that tells him they really need to rest before their bodies give up. There's no way of knowing how many days like this one they have ahead of them, after all.

He has to call her name twice before she reacts, and when she turns around, there is a certain stubborn set to her jaw. She wants to keep going, it's easy to see, and yeah, he kind of gets it. He wants to go home, too. But the part of him that cares more for her than for getting out of here wins out easily, so he walks up to her and gives her his best stern frown to nip every objection in the bud.

"Campfire," he says quietly and then simply walks off the road to the nearest group of bushes.

He doesn't have to tell her to follow him, she does that on her own. And that tells him loud and clear how tired she really is.

*** *** ***

She yawns while she unrolls the sleeping bags, and even though his stomach feels vaguely empty, he's not entirely sure he can keep his eyes open long enough to eat even an apple. It's like sitting down drains all remaining energy out of him, and while he leans back against the trunk of a fallen tree, he just hopes he won't fall asleep like that again.

She eyes the sleeping bags for a moment, then shoots him a glance, but before she can even think of asking, he turns his head and pretends to inspect the shrubbery behind him. If she wants to zip 'em together, he's more than fine with that, but he's not going to make that decision for her. 

And just like that, they are back to where they have been for years. Funny.

He presses his lips together and fights the overwhelming feeling of frustration that suddenly washes over him. It shouldn't be that hard. Not for two people who know each other like they do.

*** *** ***

He's not sure when exactly he loses this particular train of thought and really looks at the plants he uses as an alibi. Science isn't his thing, but he suddenly can't help wondering how long these will hold up. He frowns while he tries to conjure up facts from long-forgotten biology classes. Can chlorophyll adapt to this different kind of light? Will it still work the same? 

Damn, where's Abby when you need a stream-of-consciousness science rambling for once?

A gust of wind he doesn't feel ruffles the tiny, feathery leaves in front of him, and Tony reaches out and runs his hand through them. They still feel normal and pretty much alive, and that's a good sign, right? Shouldn't plants show some obvious signs of _'I can't cope with this!'_ after two days?

His skin tickles suddenly, and his eyes widen when the veins in the leaves suddenly seem very prominent. Bright green.

"Whoa," he mutters and moves his hand through the leaves again. The glow intensifies, and then energy suddenly showers from them and seeps into his hand. "Holy--"

Ziva is by his side before the curse has left his lips completely. He is vaguely amused by the fact that this time she reaches for her gun without asking what's wrong first. Atta ninja.

"Relax, it's just plant life," he murmurs. "Look at this."

She leans over the tree trunk beside him while he moves his hand again, drawing another shower of energy from the leaves. It looks like a special effects version of summer rain, and his skin soaks it up greedily until his whole arm tingles. It's not the bad kind of tingle, more like the kind a good caffeine rush gives, and so he keeps doing it.

Ziva makes a tiny noise of surprise beside him, and when he turns his head and looks at her, he sees her with her eyes wide and utter fascination written all over her face. She leans forward hesitantly and puts one hand to his back to balance herself while she reaches for the branch, too. It's acting up, though, and for her it pretends to be just a normal plant, no play of light, no energy messing with her.

She frowns when she pokes a leaf, then rubs it between her fingers and comes to the same conclusion. "I feel nothing out of the ordinary," she states. She sounds annoyed, and suddenly he can't help but smile at her. She's cute when she pouts.

Her frown deepens, and she pulls her hand back with a hint of frustration in her stance. Her other hand slides up his back and comes to rest against his neck. She doesn't really notice it, he's pretty sure about that, and he doesn't say anything, just so she will stay close a little longer. Her fingertips run up his neck, and just like that his skin prickles again, only this time the tiny flux of energy jumps between him and his partner. And that's a totally different feeling. A lot more intense.

Ziva flinches at the sensation of sparks dancing over her skin. She stares at him wide-eyed, and Tony takes a deep breath while his pulse suddenly races.

"Should have guessed you're not into plants," he murmurs, and she laughs weakly. Her fingers keep stroking his neck, though, soaking up the energy coming from his skin, and the sensation sends a shudder down his back. His body tingles all over suddenly, and that's not just from the way she makes it spark against hers. 

He really needs to feel her again. Taste her. Fuck her. Needs to hear the hot little noises she makes when she comes, because _fuck._ Now that he knows what she sounds like, he feels like a crack addict. He needs more of it.

Her eyes widen a bit more when she sees the sudden shift in his expression, and for a moment, her questing fingers still, as if she's not sure she really wanted to provoke that reaction. But when he raises a hand to her neck to pull her closer, she doesn't resist, she just moves into his touch so easily that it's a little scary.

*** *** ***

It starts out almost tentative, but by the time he has his hands under her shirt Ziva is already lost in the sensation of his kiss, and her mouth turns downright greedy on his. Somewhere in the back of his mind it amuses him how impatient she can be, and maybe that's the thing that gives him enough control to refuse hard and fast this time and aim for a slower pace instead. He wants to convince her that being halfway out of their minds isn't the only way to make this good.

It's tough, though. She's just too delicious, and her body squirms against his so eagerly that he maneuvers her over to the sleeping bags at one point, just so he can catch his breath while he gets her out of her clothes.

And yes, she complains when he takes his sweet time undressing her -- not with words, but with frustrated little sounds and twists of her hips and the way she pulls at his clothes in return. He moans when she gets more demanding and runs her hand over his cock, and for a moment he buries his face in her neck and just tries to breathe. Even through his sweats that simple touch is almost too much, and eventually he takes her hand and keeps her questing fingers away from her target. He has a reputation to uphold, after all.

"Tony," she mutters and bites her lip, and yeah, it's a sound of protest that gets right under his skin because he's never heard her this needy, this demanding before. And some part of his brain can't get over the fact that she suddenly wants _him_ like that.

"Yes, Ziva?" he murmurs and leans over her. Slowly and very deliberately he runs his mouth over her neck, all the way down to her breast, chasing a perky nipple with his lips until she moans and loses track of whatever complaint she was about to make.

His skin prickles again by the time he's finally naked and she squirms underneath him. Her body shudders and tenses when he settles his weight on her, and suddenly she moves against him so urgently that he's no longer able to take it slow. _Next time,_ he thinks. There has to be a next time for that, right?

She moans and presses her face into his chest as he pushes into her. At first he thinks she wants him to go slower, and he's not really sure he can do that. But then her tongue flicks out and she tastes him hungrily, and her fingernails dig into his back. She's so tight that he can't think straight, but she still raises her legs and urges him to slide even deeper into her.

"Fuck," he mutters, and Ziva laughs, the sound just as shaky as his own voice.

"Yes," she groans, arching her back, "please."

He kisses her again, hard, sloppy, stealing her breath, and she's so hot around him that he almost loses it right there, moaning into her mouth while he shoves into her and she clings to him, throwing his own desperate need back at him. Her fingers dig into his hair, and maybe she pulls a little too hard, but he doesn't really mind. He's too lost in her heat and the way she meets his thrusts. How she takes all he has to offer and demands more from him at the same time.

She gasps in almost-shock when he pushes himself up on his arms and that gives him an angle that brings him even deeper into her. Her body suddenly shakes underneath him, and yeah, fuck, she likes that, she likes feeling him like that, he can tell, it's kinda-- 

Her breath is hot on his skin, and that sensation mingles with the energy he suddenly feels rise and course through him, rising up his arms from his fingertips, right where his hands are digging into the ground to give him more leverage. He gasps and stares at his own arms, the way the hairs stand on edge suddenly because tiny, tiny streams of bluish light sneak all over his skin and sink into his pores.

His body tingles all over, and he thinks that in theory, he should freak out now and it should distract him from Ziva. But in reality it only heightens the way he feels her, her wet heat, the urgency in her movements, the fire in her coal eyes. He digs his fingers deeper into the dirt, and his head falls forward as he concentrates on the new kind of energy that surges in his veins.

"Oh, fuck," he groans as Ziva's fingernails leave marks on his back. He watches her face, with her eyes closed and her lips parted, twitching while she makes these hot little sounds and concentrates so intensely on feeling him that he wants to keep going like this forever. But he can tell she's getting close, and he knows that will make him lose it, too, and so he presses his mouth to hers and shoves his tongue between her lips and tries to let her feel what he does.

She shudders hard underneath him, and he can feel the exact moment where the flow of energy spills over, from his lips to hers. Her eyes snap open and she stares at him, shocked, her pupils a whirlwind of molten fire. One heartbeat, two. Then she suddenly groans and eats his mouth and sucks on his tongue, because yes, it's good, it's so good it makes his head spin and his heart race, and so he keeps pouring himself into her until he feels her body tighten around him, feels her tense in the most delicious way. 

This time he can't wait for her to come down from the high. This time he joins her on the rise.

[to the incredibly beautiful, but not safe for work illustration to this](http://littlesammy.livejournal.com/283183.html%20)

*** *** ***

She's awake long before he is. 

For a brief moment she feels the strong urge to wake him up so they can get back on their way. It's the sensible thing to do, after all, and it's what she would do under other circumstances. But just then Tony murmurs something against her neck and his arm tightens around her waist, and whatever he just said, the touch of his lips makes her sigh and settle back against him.

He's a solid, heavy presence at her side, and it surprises her a bit that she likes waking up like this, naked, with him all over her. The way he holds her borders on possessive, and it's strange that she doesn't mind it. She has shoved lovers away for much lesser displays of affection before, but for some reason she's okay with him being slightly... what is the expression again? Clingy?

 _Lover._ Her pulse stutters when she rolls the word around in her head. He is that now, right? Her lover?

She turns her head and looks at him, _really_ looks at him for the first time since they stopped at the lake. He looks different than he does at work, that much is sure. And yes, she has seen him sleep a hundred times, but for some reason she doesn't remember even one time when he was so relaxed. At peace. His mouth, always agile, always working away, is slack now, and she is tempted to kiss him again, just because she wants to feel the texture of his lips.

He knows how to kiss. He really does. And she is forced to admit that she enjoyed kissing him quite a lot. 

She bites her lip as other memories rise and she remembers that it isn't just kissing him she enjoys. Oh, he's--

Tony stirs slightly, as if he feels the direction into which her thoughts have drifted, and her cheeks burn when her body reacts intimately to the way he slides against her. The man's asleep, for God's sake, and he still manages to arouse her?

She takes a shaky breath and looks away, staring at his hand on her stomach instead. Goose bumps travel up his arm when she runs her fingertips across the back of his hand, and while she still wonders why it took them so long when they react so easily to each other, tiny blue sparks jump from his skin to her fingertips. She flinches, and Tony's fingers spread on her skin instinctively as if he wants to calm her down. He's awake now, she can feel it even before she meets his sleepy eyes. She just knows. There's a certain kind of underlying tension in him suddenly, and that's the Tony she is used to.

"Hey," he says, and that comes out so unexpectedly soft that something deep in her stomach flutters with excitement. She's never heard _that_ kind of voice from him before. She likes it when he sounds intimate like that.

Then he suddenly yawns, and she's torn between shaking her head because he just ruined a perfectly good moment... and rubbing his belly, because for some reason he still manages to look like a sleepy, oversized puppy. She does neither, just watches him reach for his backpack and dig a bottle of water out.

He offers the bottle to her first, and she takes a sip, then hands it back to him. "So," he says and rinses his mouth while he gives her a speculative glance.

Ziva props herself up on one elbow to look at him while she waits for the rest of the question, even though she knows already what he wants to ask. She's not dense. This is the moment where people usually decide how to proceed.

She's not sure she has a clear answer for him, though. She _wants_ to proceed, she knows that much. But she's really not sure how, and from the look he gives her he doesn't feel much different. A few years ago, most of this would have been so much easier and with a lot less baggage attached, but now...

He accidentally leans into her when he puts the bottle back, and in the end that's what makes the decision for her. Because he's suddenly so close that she can already feel him leaving his smell all over her again, and the thought alone makes her pulse rush and trip and stumble over itself. Her breathing picks up speed, too, and he notices that, of course. He's so perceptive when it comes to her it's sometimes scary.

And his smile is addictive, much like his kisses are, so when he gives her that certain kind of grin, the kind that says he wants to eat her raw, she doesn't have all that much of a choice left. 

She's just glad this isn't a normal work day. They'd be horribly late.

*** *** ***

It takes a bit of an effort for her to pack up her things and go 'back to business', as Tony calls it later. For some reason it's suddenly strangely tempting to simply ignore the fact that they still need to get home somehow, and she has to force herself to shoulder her backpack again and pick up their march where they left it off the night before.

She tries not to think about the reasons for that. She also tries to ignore the disconcerting fact that, if she were an average woman, she'd feel tempted to reach for Tony's hand every now and then. It's bad enough that she looks at him like she does.

*** *** ***

In the end it takes them less than a mile to get back into their established groove, with Ziva stomping ahead and Tony in her back. 

He's slightly restless, and strangely, moving forward doesn't help all that much. Maybe because they wasted away a good deal of the morning, and he's not entirely sure that was such a bright idea. Oh, yes, it was a pretty good way to start the day, and he really likes how she looks at him since then, but there are still miles and miles left to cover before they reach Vegas, and who knows what will happen until then. 

Okay, yeah, so basically he worries because he knows Ziva, and he has a hunch that maybe she will, at some point, start regretting the time wasted with this morning's interlude. And he feels just a touch too insecure about all of this to believe possible doubts on her side are easily put to rest.

But just then she glances at him over her shoulder, and yeah, it's silly, but he still feels the sudden and irresistible urge to smile at her, just for the sake of it. The expression she gives him in return doesn't look all that much like regret.

*** *** ***

The gas station looks like it's already been abandoned long before the otherworldly zone washed over it. It sits in the middle of a very dry strip of sand and dust, and that scenery is finally the one Tony really associates with desert and Nevada, not the lush valley they've been walking through for the past few days. (Not that he minds the valley, really. It's been a lot less draining than endless rubble would have been. But still.)

According to their tourist map they are now gradually nearing the end of the valley, and once they're out of it, they will have a long hike through the real desert ahead of them. Tony isn't too fond of the idea, but even he has to admit they don't have much of a choice.

There's a tiny shack tacked to the gas station that doubles as a store. It's still stocked with goods, so that's a relief. Food choices are limited, but at least there is enough bottled water to last a few days. 

While he starts stuffing bottles into his backpack he finds that he hates the thing by now. His back is... well, not exactly killing him, but by now it's seriously complaining about the constant load he's juggled around for the past days. He's pretty sure the next time Gibbs tells him to grab his gear, he'll throw a fit. (Or his backpack.)

He stares at his backpack and blinks, suddenly lost in thought when he realizes that yes, he is kind of worn-out today, but it's not really the same bone-deep tiredness he has dragged around with him for the past couple of days. And now that he thinks about it, that's rather strange, especially after yesterday's insanely long hike. (And, well, the fact that he hasn't gotten all that much sleep since a certain Israeli has kept him very effectively from dozing off.) His muscles no longer complain quite as badly as they did the night before, and he's pretty sure it's not just an aftereffect of good sex that he feels so relaxed. Maybe last night's energy play has something to do with this. He does feel a bit like his batteries have been recharged -- literally. Interesting.

He snags a few chocolate bars and rips one open on the fly while Ziva explores the back of the store. She suddenly slows down and falls very quiet, and when she shoots him a glance, she has that weird expression on her face that usually tells him her instincts have just come out of hiding. He's not sure what's going on back there, but he quickly swallows the last bite of chocolate and then follows her cautiously.

He draws his Sig even before he reaches the shelf that has been knocked over in the last row. Cans are scattered all over the floor, some bottles are broken and one door of the large cooler in the back has been smashed in. Tony's pulse runs a whole lot faster all of a sudden, and when Ziva looks at him again he can see that her brain is going a mile a minute. Yeah, something happened here, alright. And since the liquids on the floor look pretty fresh, it didn't happen before the world went nuts but a lot more recently.

The backdoor gapes open, and he jerks his chin so Ziva notices. She raises her gun carefully, and they move towards the door in the same cautious way they have perfected over the years. His pulse pounds a little harder, and he tries to tell himself that it was probably just the mountain lion in search of a meal. Or one of its relatives.

Ziva barges through the door first, and he covers her. They've done this so many times that it's almost a moot point for her to wait for his nod. And yet she does, she waits until he's ready and only then she does her thing. He can't remember ever being this much in tune with anyone else. Not even Gibbs.

She calls him from outside, and he follows her cautiously. She sounds calm but he doesn't put his gun away just yet. Because she hasn't called it clear yet and because he feels itchy suddenly, and that has nothing to do with the fact that dust is creeping into the neck of his shirt and he starts sweating again.

There's a body on the ground.

They move closer carefully, their guns trained on the man in camo gear. Tony is mostly sure it's not necessary -- the guy looks pretty dead even from a distance -- but it doesn't hurt to be careful. Especially in a place like this, where the rules are still somewhat of a guessing game.

Ziva puts the tip of her boot under the man's shoulder and gives him a shove so she can see his face. Oh yeah, he's dead. His skin is a sick shade of pale and his eyes are dull, and that feels creepy. Weird how he has gotten used to the glow.

Tony doesn't recognize the uniform's insignia or the cut. Some sort of camouflage coverall. Young guy, barely twenty, shoulders like Damon Werth. Blond crew cut, blue eyes. Geez, that kid should be in a boy band somewhere and make girls swoon, not bleed out in the Nevada desert sand.

He keeps watching the area while Ziva puts her gun away and then goes down on one knee beside the dead guy to search him. "No identification," she mutters.

There's a big fat hole in the boy's chest. He also sports heavily bruised knuckles and a split lip, with blood dripping all over his chin, and if the bullet hole wasn't indication enough, this says it pretty clearly: the kid didn't just drop down on his own.

He watches while Ziva gets back to her feet and brushes the dust off her pants out of reflex. Then she turns her head and looks at him, and he sees a strange uneasiness flicker in her eyes. Which isn't all that surprising, considering the fact that they just found out they aren't alone in here after all.

*** *** ***

It's weird to watch her go into full combat mode. 

Technically, he knows what she is capable of. He knows she'll never be a damsel in distress, and he's seen her do things that would have made Dolph Lundgren cower in fear. 

But he's still never seen her quite like this before, with all her senses on high alert, constantly scanning their surroundings while they continue their trek south. She's dangerous. And right now, she is a throwback to her assassin days, and that, in turn, makes Tony incredibly nervous. 

Good thing she's never been on _his_ tail.

*** *** ***

This time it's Ziva who stops without warning. Her eyes flick all over the place nervously while she searches for something she can't see yet, and Tony watches her cautiously. His nerve endings tingle with sudden anxiety, and he glances around, trying to see something she doesn't.

There's a group of buildings ahead that is not even worth being called a town -- a couple of farm houses and a barn, just off the side of the road. They've seen these clusters of farm houses along the way repeatedly, and these look just as abandoned as the rest of the valley. For some reason Ziva still stares at the low buildings with a nervous scowl, and so Tony reaches for his gun.

"What?" he asks her quietly, and Ziva shakes her head slowly.

"I don't know. It's..." She hesitates, then glances at him. "I think there is someone here."

"Maybe another animal," he suggests when she doesn't offer more, and she concentrates, then shakes her head again.

"No. It's not like the mountain lion. It's... much more prominent."

"You didn't even feel the lion," he says, and she rolls her eyes and slips her backpack off her shoulders. Then she puts a finger to her lips and draws her own gun.

Yeah, sometimes he really loves her. Fiercely.

*** *** ***

He feels sweat pool between his shoulder blades as they slowly make their way towards the barn. He has no idea what sort of hunch Ziva has, but he's never been one to doubt her, aside from her choice in men, so he won't start now when their instincts are the best thing to rely on.

His shoes are too loud on the gravel, and he grimaces while he slows down behind Ziva and presses into the shadows of the barn wall. He strains his senses as hard as he can, but this time he is the one who's blind to what's going on. His own spider sense is quiet, and there's nothing besides dust and weirdly moving shadows all around them. All he can do for now is follow Ziva, watch out for trouble and cover her.

She slows down before she rounds the corner of the building, then glances back at him and nods sharply. And no, he's not comfortable with letting her go first this time. He suddenly feels the urge to grab her and make a run for it. He doesn't really care about who hides behind that poor excuse of a shed, he just wants to get out of here with his partner, preferably both of them intact, so--

Tony freezes when she finally rounds the corner and almost immediately backs up again, a gun in her own face. His pulse jackhammers and pounds in his ears, and no, no, this isn't right, this is not the way they're supposed to go out. Not yet anyway.

Ziva's eyes widen minutely while Tony stares at the stranger's gun with narrowed eyes and more sweat on his forehead. Okay, she's shocked, he gets that. They haven't seen another human being in ages, at least not a living one, and since it's probably not some big cat wielding that gun...

"Come on," he mutters under his breath, barely moving his lips, but the stranger holding Ziva at gunpoint stays behind the barn and doesn't expose himself. Clever bastard.

He glances at her and watches the shock in her face deepen even more. And then Tony's eyes widen when she slowly lowers her own gun, gradually, as if her arm has lost its strength somewhere along the way. Her lips part as if she is about to say something, and he suddenly wants to grab her and drag her away again. 

Bad thing is, she doesn't really look like she'd be able to walk right now, let alone run. 

He bites back a curse and inches closer to the corner while he tries to get her attention. Ziva, though, remains unmoving, very much like during their encounter with the mountain lion, and he wonders what the fuck is going on in her head right now. She seems almost paralyzed, and that's not like her, really. The only person he can think of to provoke such a strong reaction would be Eli David, and Tony is pretty sure _he's_ not--

"Ray," she says, and Tony blinks.

Or, yeah, that one.


	5. Four

"It _is_ you," the guy behind the shed says, and yeah, Tony knows that voice and that accent, he's heard it before. And he still doesn't like it. (Now he can admit it, right?)

He watches quietly how Ray Cruz lowers his arm and leaves the cover of the barn after all. Briefly Tony thinks about securing his own gun, but seriously? No. Not when the guy moves so confidently and wastes no time to get closer to Ziva than necessary. Looks like he didn't get the memo yet.

"I'm so glad you're safe," he mutters, touching her cheek like he still has a right to, and Tony grinds his teeth and thinks, _'Again, no thanks to you.'_

He glances at Ziva, and the way she looks at Ray, all confused and hesitant and not backing away, that's not something Tony likes to see. She seems totally out of whack, and for a heartbeat he's afraid she will actually let Ray kiss her.

His gut isn't happy with this. At all. And he's pretty sure it's not just the way Ray's eyes seem slightly different. They glow, too, but it's darker and more subdued. Less fire, as if he's not quite as affected by what's going on here. Tony's finger suddenly itches to pull the trigger, but he's done that once and it's taken too long for Ziva to forgive him. He's not going to risk her trust again.

"We've been looking for you, Ziva," Ray rattles on, and the hand that doesn't hold the gun sneaks around her waist, pulling her close. Tony almost bares his teeth when Ziva still doesn't react, just raises her chin to look at Ray, a frown drawing her brows together as if she's thinking really hard. She's treating this waayyy too carelessly. _Gut not happy._ "Thank God you're safe, I would have never forgiv--"

And just like that, Ray's words freeze in his mouth because she puts her gun under his chin. Her frown deepens, and yes, Tony is not above admitting that right now he feels like digging out pom-poms and cheering for her.

"A step back, please." Her voice is calm and very quiet, but Tony knows her well enough to hear the timbre that says there is too much tension going on now to mess with her. And hey, he can't blame her, really. He'd be just as pissed.

Okay, well. He _is_ , actually.

Ray doesn't know her well enough, though, despite the past year and despite the fact that he has probably read her dossier, and so he tilts his head and tries a winning smile on her. "Ziva, my angel, you don't mean that." _Oh, for God's sake. Of all the stupid moves..._

"I do," she replies, her voice just firm enough now that Ray's cuddly expression wavers, and while Tony wants to pat her head and offer her a cookie for being a smart ninja, she gives the slightest move with her chin in his direction. Her eyes never leave Ray Cruz' face. "And, more importantly, he does."

Ray glances at him, and Tony raises his eyebrows. "Lady's choice," he says, and yeah, he is a bastard sometimes. He can't help it.

It takes a few more seconds until Cruz obeys the command and carefully lets go of Ziva. He suddenly looks uncomfortable. Probably not a development he was prepared for.

"Your gun, for now," Ziva says quietly and raises her free hand, palm up. Ray hesitates again, then hands it over, and for a moment it looks as if he wants to start pleading with her, but Ziva steps away from him the moment he opens his mouth.

She inches closer to Tony again, and he breathes out carefully. "Getting concerned there for a minute," he murmurs.

Ziva turns her head and looks at him with an expression that says he has clearly lost his mind now. "You've got to be kidding," she says, utter disbelief in her voice.

"Hey, you let him feel you up."

"I did _not_ \--" She bites back the rest of the words and forces herself to take a deep breath, and while she narrows her eyes, she tells him, "Running into him is too much of a coincidence." Her words are suddenly very carefully pronounced and precisely chopped apart, and that clues Tony in that she's angry. Because he suspected her to go lovebird on Ray again.

"Actually, it is not a coincidence." Ray chooses this moment to interrupt their budding quarrel, and that irritates Tony enough to start frowning at Cruz, too. "My men and I were looking for you. NCIS asked for the agency's help. I am part of a retrieval unit."

For a few seconds that almost makes sense, but then Ziva, bless her inherent mistrust, tilts her head and says, "How did you know we were still alive? When no one else seems to be?"

That puts a damper on Ray's try at talking his way out of this, especially when Tony adds, "Yeah, and why exactly are _you_ alive in here, CI-Ray?" 

Cruz' face closes down hard and fast, and for a moment he eyes Tony warily. He has a dozen thoughts going on at once right now, that much is easy to see even with his calm and unruffled facade. He didn't expect things to go this way, apparently.

In the end he just says, "I'm afraid that information exceeds your clearance level."

Tony snorts. "Did you really just say that?" he asks, shaking his head. "We're alive, but not cleared to know why?"

"Correct," Ray replies, and there is something in his voice that Tony can't quite place yet, something halfway between smugness and secrecy. He doesn't like that tone.

"Where are your men?" Ziva asks, still frowning, but concentrating on the important things here. "I'm assuming the young man we found at the gas station is one of them?" 

Ray looks at her, his expression suddenly guarded. "Yes," he confirms after a second's hesitation, and Ziva tilts her head.

"What happened? Did you kill him?"

For a moment it looks as if Ray wants to refuse her an answer but then he sighs and raises a hand to rub his face. And that's when Tony realizes that he looks different than the last time he's seen the agent. Older. Not quite as clean-cut as back in DC. It might be just the camouflage coverall he has exchanged his suit for, or the stubble. Or the way he wears his hair, ruffled and no longer gelled back to the extreme. Whatever it is, it makes Tony wonder what's been going on on his side of the fence over the past few days.

"He was out of control. Attacking his teammates." He lowers his hand, and Tony glances at the bruised knuckles. "We knew there was a certain risk of that happening. It's a strain on the nervous system."

"What is?" Tony asks, and Ray turns his head to look at him with burning coal eyes. 

For a moment he thinks he'll get an answer this time. Then the CIA agent straightens his back and says, "I'll take that gun now, Agent DiNozzo."

Tony blinks and wants to laugh. _He and what army?_ He even opens his mouth to give a wise-ass reply. He just doesn't get very far because there's suddenly the barrel of a gun pressing into his neck.

Cruz has a pleasant, non-committal smile on his face while Ziva's eyes flick back and forth between her partner and whoever is behind him right now. Her expression is all over the place, torn between anger and frustration, and for a moment Tony thinks about making a run for it. (They have some value, apparently, so they probably won't get shot, right?) But then Ziva presses her lips together tightly and hands Ray both his gun and her own. 

She doesn't look at her former boyfriend while she does that. Her eyes never leave Tony's face, and yeah, this is one of the moments where he loves her. Again.

*** *** ***

Following classic drama theory, this should be the point where Ray drops the act completely and proves he's been a slime bag all along. And Tony can't wait for that to happen, despite the way it will hurt Ziva, because he doesn't like Ray Cruz. He really doesn't. There's no way CI-Ray can be one of the good guys, not with what's happening here.

So yes, he is surprised when, once his nameless soldier has secured their weapons, Ray steps closer to Ziva and touches her face again.

"Ziva," he mutters, ignoring her frown and the tension that washes through her at his touch. "I was so worried about you. We had no way of telling where you are and if you're okay. But you're safe now, that's all that matters for now, right? Please, I swear I would tell you more about all of this if I could. You _have_ to believe me. I'm only here to keep you safe."

And it's weird, but the more he talks, the more Ziva's frown smoothes over until she looks at him all confused and torn between... what exactly? Tony isn't sure. The only thing he knows is he really doesn't like the way Ray talks his way back into her emotions. And he can't do anything about it right now. There's still a gun in his back.

"Stop it, Ray," she says at one point and shakes her head, but it sounds strangely weak. "No more lies."

"Ziva," he says, slightly exasperated, and that makes her step back until her shoulder brushes Tony's. Ray's eyes narrow for a second, but he has it under control soon. "I wasn't lying when I told you we have a lot to talk about," he tells her, and that's weird again because his voice sounds very calm and reasonable all of a sudden. "I'm sorry we can't start now, but I will try and make arrangements with the people who can decide how to proceed. I promise, you will get more information later. For now, I need to take you both with me to the pickup point. We need to get home as fast as we can."

"So home still exists?" Tony asks. He groans when Ray hesitates briefly. "What, you can't even tell us _that?_ "

"DC is untouched, yes." Again Ray hesitates, then he sighs and gives them at least a breadcrumb. "Look, this is much bigger than any of us. We _need_ to get out of here."

Tony blinks slowly and just stares at the CIA agent for a moment. Then he raises a hand to rub his eyes and takes a deep breath. "Any idea what caused it?"

"Yes," Ray presses out. "And it's classified."

"Right," Tony grinds out, then looks at Ziva with a grim smile that's just this side of humorous. "See? I told you. Government experiments."

Ziva, for once, doesn't roll her eyes.

*** *** ***

She can't remember the last time she was as confused as she is right now. And if she thinks a little more closely about it, she's not sure she ever was, not even during the summer with Michael. Maybe because Ray is right: what happened here _is_ bigger than any of them.

Maybe, though, it is because her senses keep getting assaulted. Two men she can feel very clearly currently, their presence permeating every breath she takes. Ray, behind her, keeps radiating the new kind of energy she has gotten a taste for over the past few days, almost like he is leaking it. Tony's energy, on the other hand, is far less obvious, but for some reason he still feels a lot closer -- as if he is right under her skin, for lack of a better word. (Briefly she wonders why she can hardly feel the third one, the soldier. Then she decides it is just as well. She has enough to deal with already.)

Both of their presences distract Ziva's thoughts in such a way that she soon begins to feel restless and uncomfortable. She just wants to fit the few bits and pieces of information they have into the bigger puzzle, now that she finally has one that intrigues her enough. Wants to find a way out of this and a way to leave Ray behind because she knows he is lying about something. (It's weird, but in here, she can almost taste it on her tongue.) But all she can seem to concentrate on is the way Tony inches closer to her gradually and the way Ray's attention eventually shifts from Ziva to her partner and the way he hovers around her. 

"Are you okay?" 

She should have guessed it would take Tony less than a mile to notice her distraction and even less to voice his concern. And he looks concerned, that much is apparent when she glances at him. She can also tell he wants to touch her, to get through to her and maybe just for the sake of touching, but he doesn't, because Ray is watching them.

It makes her uncomfortable, this being stuck between them. The fact that they both feel so familiar doesn't help. It irritates her and grates on her nerves, and Ziva is tempted to just tell Tony to back off already. She doesn't, though, just nods sharply. She knows he means well, after all.

"Okay," he says, then glances away for a moment. His jaw clenches and proves his answer a lie, and after a few heartbeats, he looks at her once more, and there is a strange honesty in his eyes all of a sudden. "Just wondering what's going on, you know."

Ziva frowns and tilts her head, and Tony shrugs awkwardly when he has to elaborate because she doesn't get what he means right away. "It's just because you let him touch you like that. Seems weird." He takes a slow breath before he adds, "And I don't like it."

She isn't used to this. For a moment she stares at him, frowning, and she finds that she has no desire to 'go there', as Tony would put it. She knows he's allowed to wonder about her like that now. (It's only reasonable, given the circumstances.) But she really doesn't want him to mistrust her, and the notion that he thinks he might have a reason to... it makes her uncomfortable.

She reacts the way she has become used to: anger and deflection. 

"Are you jealous?" She doesn't think when she says it. It's the way they have always treated this kind of concern: she accuses him of it because it seems so outrageous that he, of course, has no chance but to deny it.

But she doesn't keep in mind that things have changed since the last time they used that way of treating each other. That _they_ have changed, both as individuals and as a unit. And so it makes her heart pound and her pulse drum in her ears when he doesn't fidget this time, doesn't scoff, just turns his head to look at her and meet her gaze squarely for a few seconds before he says, very quietly, "Yes." There is a new vulnerability in his eyes suddenly, and he looks at her as if this one word has scraped his throat raw.

And she gets it, really. She suddenly feels just as shaken, with her emotions unhinged and all over the place while she frantically tries to get a grasp on them and settle things in her mind. His eyes haven't left her face, and she thinks it's probably a good thing that they're back on the highway because that way they can't miss their path even while they're staring at each other like that.

He waits for her to say something, to react in any way, and it takes her a few tries to do just that because his words have caught her in a way she wasn't prepared for. She's not sure what he expects from her now, and while she tries to breathe calmly and her mind works furiously at the same time, she sees something flicker in his eyes. It touches her, in just the right way, and she finds that she likes it when he looks at her like that, all eager and wanting... and insecure because he needs her to reassure him, to tell him he wasn't just imagining things. 

He wasn't. It was real enough. Ray just throws her off track now because she has gotten so used to him -- and used to not seeing him as a threat -- but it's Tony who draws the real need for closeness, for physical affirmation out of her. And so she reaches out and touches his arm. She tightens her grip and presses down to get his attention. For a moment it feels like he wants to make a run for it. 

"There's no need for that," she murmurs. 

And just like that, he calms down. His muscles are very solid and real under her hand, and when he glances down quickly and then back at her face, she sees the smile he tries to hide and the relief in his eyes.

Behind them, Ray clears his throat. "You realize I can hear you, right?"

There is a slightly uncomfortable tone to his voice, and she's not sure what it means. Normally she'd say it is there because he just got laid off, but somehow, he sounds more as if he's just squeamish about accidentally hearing something private, and that feels strange considering the fact that they parted on the terms of still being more or less in a relationship. She frowns and wants to turn, but just then Tony laughs and says, "Then stop listening in."

*** *** ***

She feels naked without her gun. That's a far more noticeable loss of baggage than the backpacks Ray tells them to leave behind.

For the first time she actually regrets that she no longer carries her knives. Granted, she has not yet reached the point where she would use either on Ray without hesitation, but by now she is itchy enough to long for defensive metal in her hands.

He's still an irritating presence in her back, distracting her and keeping her thoughts unraveled. Maybe it's simply because she no longer trusts him. (She's not entirely sure when that started.)

*** *** ***

The camp is makeshift and hardly recognizable as one. It's barely more than a tent with a fold-out table, sheltering supplies and equipment. There's another soldier standing guard, and Tony starts to feel queasy. The fact that Ray treats them in an exceedingly polite way and nobody is pointing a gun at them currently doesn't do much to ease his gut: he doesn't like this, and they are still prisoners.

He watches Ziva's eyes flick all over the place. She's already busy with calculating possible exit routes. Apparently she's not too happy with the situation either.

"Please," Ray says behind him, his voice deceptively calm and pleasant. He gestures towards the tent, and Tony can't help the frown that wants to form on his face. "Get some rest. Have a bite to eat while I arrange our pickup."

The guard watches them without uttering a single sound. He has a machine gun strapped over his shoulder and holds it loosely while he stares at them out of the corner of his eye. He could be the twin of the boy they found a few miles back, only that his eyes aren't dead and blue, but shining in an insanely bright grey. Tony hesitates, but when Ziva ducks into the tent and sits down on a crate that looks vaguely military-ish, he follows her.

Ray leaves them and vanishes out of sight soon, but it would have been too much to hope for to be left alone, of course. The soldier steps into Tony's way the moment he tries to peek out of the tent, and the agent gives the younger man a grim smile.

"Good boy," he mutters, but he doesn't even get a frown in return, just a blank face and grey eyes that glare at him like headlights. 

With a sigh Tony turns back towards Ziva and watches her for a moment, how she's sitting on the crate stiffly, her palms pressed against the top of it. Her right index finger taps the wood, and he's not exactly sure why. Her face looks like she's lost in a mix of impatience and deep thoughts.

He glances at the soldier who has turned his head now, watching the landscape instead, then he moves over to stand beside Ziva. "What's the plan?" he mutters under his breath, and she looks up and stares at him with a hit of confusion in her eyes.

"Plan?"

Tony sighs and squats beside her so he can look her in the eye properly. "To get us out of here," he explains as quietly as possible. His hand sneaks up on her thigh, and he really hopes she won't mind. It feels like he hasn't touched her in far too long. And okay, maybe it's just so he can remind himself that the previous touching really happened. "I know you're thinking, I can see the gears turn as we speak, Ziva. How's the escape plan coming along?"

Ziva blinks in confusion. "No plan. We need to find out more about what's going on first," she says, and now it's Tony who stares at her as if she is unhinged.

"Uhm. When did we switch brains?" he finally asks, and she opens her mouth to reply when her attention suddenly drifts away and she stares over his shoulder at the patch of desert and sky they can see from inside the tent.

Two yellow flares rise up from the ground with a hiss and tear apart the sepia sky. "Okay," he murmurs. "Maybe you're right." Her hand covers his on her thigh, and he turns his head to look at her, curious.

It's a quick kiss, barely begun by the time it ends again, but he likes the way she's the slightest bit breathless after it.

*** *** ***

It doesn't take all that long until Ray comes back. For a moment it looks like he wants to frown at the way Tony kneels beside the crate and leans against Ziva, with his hand still on her thigh, but he soon gets it under control and slips back into his non-committal mask.

"I imagine you have a lot of questions now," he says and moves to the far end of the tent to dig out a water bottle. Tony rolls his eyes and gets back to his feet, then walks around the crate and sits down behind Ziva. "Like, why am I here to pick y--"

"I know why _you_ are here," Ziva interrupts him, and Ray blinks and takes a sip of water before he turns around. "Because I know you and because I used to trust you, which makes 'picking us up' a lot easier."

"'Used to'?" he asks, and there is something in his voice that is no longer quite as unemotional, but Ziva doesn't even react, just continues to draw her own conclusions.

"What I don't know is why you are _here,_ when we are many miles from where we should be. Did you track us in any way? And if so, how, when nothing electronic works in here?"

Ray stares at her quietly and takes another sip of water before he screws the bottle shut again. Then he sighs. "I'm sorry, Ziva. I really am. But I can't--"

"Can't tell me, I know." There is a tense flavor to her voice now, and Tony glances at her sideways.

"You really shouldn't make her angry," he says with a wry grin while he presses his palm against the small of her back. She takes a deep breath and leans back against his touch, just enough so he can feel her try to center herself.

Ray Cruz, on the other hand, reacts not like he expected him to, and for the first time the CIA agent loses some of his calm. He takes a step towards them, and such a wild anger suddenly flashes in his eyes that Tony eyes the other man warily and waits for the punch. Because right now he sure as hell looks like he wants to throw one. "You think this is fun for me, DiNozzo? You think I _enjoy_ lying to someone close to me?"

For a moment it's dead quiet in the tent. Tony knows it's childish, but he still wants to jump up and point his finger now because Ray finally slipped up, he finally admitted that he isn't being honest with Ziva. But then she tenses noticeably against him, and so he just presses his hand harder against her back while she says slowly, "That is why I stopped doing it a while ago."

She raises her chin when Ray stares at her, his jaw clenched, his eyes glowing darker suddenly. There's some heavy emotion going on all of a sudden, but it's not exactly on Ziva's side, and Tony wonders what Ray's deal is. If he is really in love with Ziva or if that was just a part of the job that was more pleasant than the lies.

Then Cruz sighs and puts the water bottle down on the fold-out table. "I _am_ sorry, Ziva. I wish circumstances were different."

She swallows hard when he turns around and walks out on them, and for a moment Tony has to fight the urge to pull her closer to him and hug her, just to keep her from looking so devastated. 

He doesn't dare. He's just not sure how she would react. Because yes, barely an hour ago she has declared Ray her ex. But right now, while he leaves her without another word and she stares at his back with something close to pain flashing across her face... yeah. Right now, Tony isn't sure at all.

Then she suddenly breathes out and leans back against Tony completely, and after a few more moments she turns her head and rubs her forehead against his cheek. He reacts instinctively and draws her closer while she snuggles _(snuggles?)_ against him and glances at the soldier who still watches them from the entrance.

"Escape plan," she murmurs against Tony's neck and pretends it is just something she whispers to her lover. Her voice is barely more than a soft sigh, but he still hears the firmness in it. She has made the necessary decisions, it seems. "Now." 

"Okay," he replies just as low. 

But despite her words and his own need to get out of this, he spends the next minute just running his hand up and down her arm. Ziva doesn't complain. She leans into him instead and soaks up his presence for a bit while she breathes in his scent, and he finds that he likes that. A lot.

He really should be more careful. If she keeps doing that to him, he might end up being in love with her all the time.

*** *** ***

They keep sitting close like this, murmuring suggestions and observations to each other under the guise of caresses exchanged. After a while, soldier boy loses all interest in them and his eyes drift from the boring, cuddly couple to what's going on outside.

It's frustrating when it soon turns out their options are somewhat limited. Slipping through the 'back door' can't be done while they are still being watched and there's a machine gun at play. (Ziva objects at first and states that they seem to have some value to the CIA, so they probably won't get shot, but Tony isn't willing to take that chance. Especially not after they let Ray know he no longer has any claims.)

Walking out the way they came in... now, in theory this could be easy -- the guy guarding the tent is clearly no match for Ziva -- but they don't know enough about what's going on outside currently, just that there is a lot of commotion and at least three different voices on the northern side of the tent. For all they know, these guys could have a dozen buddies waiting for them just around the corner. 

It all boils down to the fact that they need more intel before they can think about making a run for it. Under normal circumstances, Tony would have found it very easy to complain about their situation. But this time he gets the feel of Ziva against him out of it, all warm and relaxed and not hesitant to touch him at all. That, and the way she suddenly raises her head and stares at his mouth when he whispers something that isn't related to escape plans at all.

*** *** ***

They still sit like that when the trouble starts outside, first with yelling, then with actual shots being fired. Tony flinches, and while their guard's head whips around with the first signs of panic, Ziva's eyes narrow. She tilts her head and listens, sudden tension making her body thrum. 

"At least two shooters," she mutters under her breath, then glances at her partner. "Another one out of control?"

Tony shrugs. His mind races ahead and goes through a dozen possibilities at once, which doesn't really get him anywhere, but still leaves him with one clear insight: this is most likely the best opportunity for escape they will get.

"Play Abby," he murmurs close to her ear, and for a moment her confusion is palpable. When he wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her closer in an overly comforting gesture, she gets it though. And when she does, she plays along so beautifully that Tony gets distracted in return, by the way she curls up against him and clings a little while she actually starts shaking. Damn, that girl is good. He can only pray that she'll never have a reason to play him.

"Hey," he calls loudly, and the soldier flinches and gives him a nervous glance. "What's going on out there?"

He sees the men's eyes flick back and forth between them and the tent entrance, and when Tony doesn't get a verbal reply, he moves as if he wants to get up and get more physical.

It has the intended effect -- the machine gun swings towards Tony and the owner seems to get even more nervous. Tony counted on the guy being still inexperienced enough to believe that men are the real danger, and so far cultural background seems to work in his favor: the shaking woman, her arms wrapped around herself and in clear distress, is mostly ignored.

"Easy," Tony mutters. "Just concerned for my girl here, you know? She panics sometimes."

Ziva must have been living in his brain again because she starts wheezing dramatically before he has even finished the sentence, then she doubles over with her body shaking harder. It looks -- and feels -- frighteningly real. Real enough that it triggers his own reflexes. Real enough that he grabs her tighter and strokes her back in a calming motion.

"Stand back," the soldier orders him and waves the gun in Tony's general direction. There's sweat on his forehead now, and Tony moves carefully, hands spread non-threateningly while he gets to his feet and takes a few steps back. He doesn't mind being out of reach, as long as the guy gives Ziva an opening, but he doesn't want him to get overzealous and start shooting blindly.

"Are you alright, ma'am?" the soldier asks and inches closer to Ziva while Tony tries not to wince at the 'ma'am'. He's already sorry for the kid.

More shots are fired outside, and Ziva flinches visibly. Her eyes widen almost comically, and her mouth makes little gasping motions as if she has trouble breathing. "I have... asthma..." she presses out, waving her hand, and this is it, Tony thinks, now she overdid it because not even this guy will believe in an NCIS field agent with asthma.

But for some reason it's the very thing that does the trick, and the soldier actually lowers his gun and steps closer, almost leaning over her. His face, previously showing nothing except grim determination and stubbornness, suddenly crinkles with concern.

The man never knows what hit him. For a moment Tony thinks she actually went too far because Ziva's target drops like a stone when her stiffened fingers hit his throat. Then he sees that the soldier's eyes roll wildly and dull a little while he sags to the ground, but they still glow, so Tony is pretty sure he's still alive.

"Asthma?" he mutters. He bends and takes the machine gun while Ziva kneels and presses her fingers to the man's neck to check for a pulse. When she finds one, she gets back to her feet fast.

"He bought it, didn't he?" she shrugs and moves towards the tent's entrance. Her hair is a mass of weird shadows that dance after her, and her eyes sparkle with so much excited energy suddenly that it rubs off on Tony. He loves her when she is like this -- when she can actually _do_ things, not just react to what other people do.

He takes the other side of the opening in the tent and tries to stay covered from view as much as possible while he peeks around the corner to see what's going on there. He can't see much on his side except for whirling dust, though, so the action is probably on the other side of the tent. Which means, in his back. _Lovely,_ he thinks and rolls his eyes.

Ziva nods and sneaks closer to the entrance when he gestures at her. She's really careful because the shooting has stopped for now, but they can hear a somewhat heated discussion going on instead. (Listening in soon turns into a frustrating effort because the aggression in the voices, one of them Ray's, is palpable, but the words are too garbled to understand what the commotion is about.) He watches her face closely when she sneaks a glance, as if that would be enough to tell him what's going on outside.

It isn't, really. But it's enough to tell him he's in for another surprise because Ziva suddenly does the same thing she did before, with the freezing up and the gawking. 

"Stop doing that," he hisses under his breath. "What is it?"

Ziva blinks and shoots him a glance, at a loss for words, and that's the moment he hears a horse whinny. It's probably the last thing he expected today. For some reason it seems even less out of the ordinary than meeting CI-Ray in this otherworld was.

"Horses? Seriously?" he mutters, and Ziva nods slowly. And then she looks back at whoever is out there, and after a minute of scrunching up her forehead she suddenly steps out of the tent, just like that, leaving her cover and drawing the attention of the stranger snarling at Ray Cruz. Tony hisses her name and wants to grab her and drag her back, but she's out of reach already and moves forward slowly.

This time it's Tony who feels frozen while he waits for the bullet that will surely shatter her brain now or hit her in the chest and take her out. It's the logical thing, right? It's what happens when you're careless -- it gets you killed. But there is no bullet and no more commotion, just a scraping sound as if a hoof scratches up dirt. And finally, a question directed at Ziva.

It's a voice he recognizes. A slightly rough voice with a certain sarcastic tint he knows all too well. Knows and hates.

"Is DiNozzo alive, too?" British accent that makes Tony grind his teeth. He stares at Ziva, wills her to explain why she is out there, but she doesn't, she just nods. "DiNozzo! Get your arse out here already! We don't have all day."

Tony grimaces. His heartbeat sounds a little too loud while he tries to think and comes up with nothing. He has no idea what brought Kort to this corner of the universe. And he _really_ has no idea why Ziva isn't going into full attack mode at the sight of him. More CIA, less trustworthy company. But he's pretty sure she has a reason for it, and so Tony takes a deep breath, grips the machine gun tighter and steps out of the tent, too.

*** *** ***

It's not like he has any way of knowing what to expect when he walks around the corner. But Tony is pretty sure that even if there had been an image in his mind of how this particular encounter would play out... it would have been nothing like what he sees now.

The first thing that catches his attention is that Ray Cruz is on the ground, clutching his right shoulder. Blood wells through his fingers, and it looks unnaturally dark in this weird light. His face is twisted into an expression of pain and scathing anger, and yeah, Tony gets that, really. He'd be pissed, too, if he'd gotten shot by Kort.

One of the soldiers is dead on the ground a few feet away. And just a little further is Trent Kort on horseback, gun in his hand, dressed in cargo pants and a partly unbuttoned and crinkled white shirt that has seen better days. That in itself is weird enough to make Tony blink in quiet confusion. To add to it, the Brit has a scarf-like cloth wrapped around his head and chin. The weird patch still covers the empty socket of his missing eye and provides a sharp contrast to the glowing blue one that remains. It makes him look like a futuristic desert warrior, straight out of a science fiction remake of _Lawrence of Arabia._ (For a moment Tony can't help the thought that he'd like to see that movie.)

The black horse Kort is on raises its head proudly and kicks the dirt, and Tony stares at the beast with its glowing coal eyes. It snorts arrogantly, and for a second that looks as if it's breathing fire because tiny energy sparks fly out of its nostrils.

Two other horses are tied to his saddle with their reins, and Tony realizes with a shudder of dread that he'll probably be expected to ride one now. If he had needed any proof at all that Kort hates his guts...

"One took off," the Brit tells him just then. "We need to get going before he comes back with reinforcements."

"Uhm," he says and raises a hand to rub his neck. "Why?" All he gets in return is a frown and the roll of a single eye, which would have looked creepy under normal circumstances, but now, with the addition of a piercing blue glow and all... It rubs Tony the completely wrong way and he grinds his teeth. "Okay, so maybe it's a dumb question, but what makes you a better choice than him?" he asks and jerks his thumb towards Ray Cruz, who remains weirdly silent. For some reason Tony would have expected more words and persuasion attempts from him.

Kort, on the other hand, just stares at him, then barks out a rough sound that probably doubles as laughter in his vocabulary. "You are remarkably close, DiNozzo. It is a dumb question." He sees Tony open his mouth open and shakes his head, interrupting him before the first word is out. "Not now. We have all day for explanations, but not much time to get out of here."

For a moment Tony feels like back when he first saw _'Terminator 2'_. He remembers vividly how his younger self sat in the movie theater and saw that scene for the first time, the scene where the T-800 reaches out for Sarah Connor and says, _'Come with me if you want to live'._ He remembers yelling at the screen, and he feels like yelling again right now, because Ziva plays John Connor right now and doesn’t tell him why.

Tony frowns and glances at his partner because he has no idea what to do now. She exchanges another glance with Kort, then turns towards Ray and says, "My gun?"

He still doesn't say a thing, but jerks his chin towards the dead soldier. Ziva nods and moves towards the man, carefully staying out of the line of fire. When she has her gun and her spare ammo back, she turns towards the horses, and that's when Tony realizes he will have no chance but to follow her. Because her eyes are now locked with Ray's, and Tony is pretty sure he doesn't like what he sees on her face. She's still concerned for the bastard.

He tells himself it's only natural if you've been sleeping with someone for almost a year. Then he reminds himself not to go there because yeah, it stings. Badly. But it is the thing that finally sets him into motion. Anything to get her away from that particular influence.

He looks at Ziva again just when a shudder runs through her and she turns and unties the spare horses from Kort's saddle. The Brit keeps his eye and gun on Ray Cruz in the meantime, and Tony has no clue why she trusts Kort more than her ex. In the grand scheme of things, Kort has pulled the much bigger crap on them. 

But she still trusts him. He can see it in the way she moves and how she glances at him without really watching him. For some reason she doesn't put him on the dangerous side of things. Which, yes, is insane. But so is Tony's impulse to follow her gut without hesitation.

His eyes slide over her slim form when she swings herself up into the saddle, and yeah, he should have expected the graceful way she does that. It still sits weirdly with him. He never even knew she could ride.

"For God’s sake, _move!_ " Kort hisses just then, and Tony flinches and walks towards the horse that is left. Brown one with a splash of white across its face. It looks at him with a very calculating gaze, as if it has something special in store for him and it's not sure yet what kind of special it is in the mood for today.

With a few undignified sounds he pulls himself up onto the horse, and yeah, he hates the fact that he is far from Ziva's grace. He can't help it, though: he still doesn't like horses. And the saddle bags don't make this any easier for him.

"And what, pray tell," he finally grunts when he's sitting up more or less straight and takes the reins from Ziva, "brings you into this humble neighborhood, Jack with one eye?"

Kort looks at him with narrowed eyes for a heartbeat as if he contemplates laughing at the crude joke. He doesn't, just twists the corners of his mouth into something that looks like a grin. "I'm the cavalry, obviously."

Tony stares at him as if he has just grown horns, then looks from him to CI-Ray, who is still on the ground, still bleeding, still fuming, still staring at them. But before he can come up with anything to reply to that, Kort does a certain _thing_ with his wrist that makes his horse turn and rush down the highway in a flurry of legs, and Tony groans and rubs his eyes. "Oh, this just gets better and better..."


	6. Five

He's not sure how long they ride. He has no sense of time whatsoever without a working watch, never had, and in here it's so much worse because normal daylight changes aren't normal anymore and don't give him any pointers.

He does know that he's sore after an embarrassingly short amount of time. By the time they finally stop for a short rest he has already trouble sitting up straight. His back hurts. His butt hurts worse. His thigh muscles cramp periodically, but he still goes for a tense smile and a forced thumbs up when Ziva asks him how he's doing. 

The ground he made with that quickly erodes when he slides off the horse with a somewhat pathetic whimper. At least Ziva just winces in sympathy and doesn't laugh at him outright.

The horse dances and seems to be just as glad to be rid of Tony, but while he watches Ziva dismount with the same grace she showed when getting on, it suddenly decides it rather wants his attention instead and bumps its head into his back. Repeatedly.

"Hey!" Tony snarls eventually and turns around to face the annoying animal. "Stop it, buddy!"

The horse looks at him for a few seconds as if it's pondering its options. Then it lowers its head and bumps his hip. With a groan Tony grabs the bridle and pulls the stubborn head back up. "I said stop it!"

The horse just snorts and stares at him, and there is a certain challenge in the dark coal eyes. Another snort, and tiny energy showers spark over Tony's skin. As impressive and fiery as it looks, it still makes him grimace and wipe his hand. Sparkly snot. Ugh.

The horse makes a guttural sound and stomps a hoof, and if it were human, Tony would highly suspect it's currently laughing its ass off. "Listen, pal--" he begins and raises his hand to give it an equivalent of the Gibbs-slap. But for some reason he doesn't go through with it, just puts his palm to its warm forehead instead, stroking it carefully. Yet another snort, and then the horse looks at him as if it's just as surprised by this action as he is.

He keeps stroking the warm skin, and after a while the horse leans into the touch. Warmth seeps into Tony's palm all of a sudden, and his eyes widen. He still isn't used to the way energy works in this place. How it's not just flipping a switch and plugging something in, but a lot more... _personal_ , for lack of a better word. It's far from electricity back home. It's life force.

"I thought you didn't like horses." Ziva's voice is a pleasant surprise in his back, low and just for him. There's a certain warmth to it, with just a hint of emotion, and he likes it when she sounds like that. She's given him some of her best speeches in that voice.

"I don't," he replies, but despite his words his hand seems to have developed a will of its own, and he keeps stroking the horse's nose anyway. "Did he tell you where he got them?"

"Ray's pickup crew," Ziva murmurs and puts her own hand to the small of his back, and yeah, it's embarrassing, but that simple touch is enough to completely distract him. "He took them out and then waited for us to be found. Apparently, they were well-equipped."

She leans into him for a few moments, and he even forgets to give her a lewd reply. Her cheek rests against his arm, her body presses into his back, and Tony actually closes his eyes and just enjoys the feel of her. Until the horse gets annoyed by the divided attention and starts to nibble at his sleeve.

"Okay," he says with a sigh and drags his arm out of the horse's reach. "Tell me why we trust Kort these days?"

She keeps leaning against him, keeps stroking his back, and there isn't any real tension in her at the question. Just a tiny bit of hesitation. "Don't laugh," she says, and he wants to turn and look at her, but she curls her fingers around his elbow and her fingertips dig into his skin, just enough to keep him still.

"Okayyy," he carefully agrees, and with a sigh Ziva leans into him a little more.

"He... felt honest."

"He... what?" He turns around after all and searches her face, but it takes a moment until Ziva raises her chin and looks at him.

"I know it sounds... out there," she says with a wriggly little motion of her hand, and when he wants to comment on that, she gives him a look that tells him he should better let her finish before he whips out the smart-ass remarks. "In here, things are different for me. Just like you feel him," she taps the horse's nose, and it snorts, not amused by that particular contact, "or the mountain lion, I can read people a lot better than in the normal world. I have a feel for them. And just like I know that Ray was keeping more things from us than I thought or like I know when your body is not interested in philosophical discussion, I know that Kort doesn't want to harm us." She meets his eyes straight on, looking at him like she dares him to defy her. 

He doesn't. There is such a strength to her voice that he can't help but believe her. And she's right, it does sound 'out there'. But then again, this whole whacky dimension is.

"It's not that hard to tell when I'm horny," he murmurs and smiles at her. He lets his thumb brush across her hand and strokes the fleshy, sensitive part at the base of her thumb slowly. There’s some half-formed intent in it, and Ziva feels it and laughs. She sounds just the slightest bit breathless now, too, but she still pulls her hand away to keep this from going any further.

"When he saw me coming out of that tent, I felt genuine relief from him, Tony," she says quietly, and that clears his head enough to think about her words. "He may keep things from us, too, but he _was_ there for us. To save us."

That takes a bit longer to sink in. "Weird concept," Tony mutters eventually and shakes his head. Ziva agrees.

*** *** ***

They are still standing too close when Kort comes back from a short detour to relieve himself, and Ziva can feel sudden curiosity radiating from him. She fights the impulse to step away from Tony, though. True, it's none of Kort's business that their partnership has taken a turn. But it is also not something she is ashamed of, and she has no desire to hide it. (She knows she may have to rethink that once they are back in DC and subjected to Gibbs's rules again, but for now...)

"I see you made a new friend," Kort sneers, and for a moment Ziva thinks he's talking about them. Then she realizes the horse is bumping Tony again, so hard this time that he almost stumbles into her. "One as thick-headed as you are. A match made in heaven."

Tony's lips twitch as he fights the instinctive snarl, and Ziva touches his chest to remind him that losing it now won't help anybody. He tenses even more in response, and suddenly she can't help the amused smile. Sometimes Kort isn't all that far off the mark.

"Yeah," Tony grinds out eventually. He turns his head, and for a moment his glowing eyes look at her so incredibly open that she feels choked by the emotion rolling off him in waves. Then he takes a deep breath, and the moment passes. He looks back at Kort and gives the CIA agent a grin that could almost be mistaken for a friendly one. "Be a good boy, Trent. Remind me why you're on our side suddenly."

Kort actually laughs at that, then shakes his head while he starts digging around in his pockets. "The only side I'm on is my own, DiNozzo."

"Okay," Tony presses out and draws the word into something impossibly long. "Then let me rephrase that -- why are you helping us?"

"That is a rather lengthy story." Kort's answer is dismissive, and he doesn't even bother to look at Tony. He pulls something out of one pocket instead, a small wooden box, octagon-shaped. Very simple design, made out of dark, polished wood. It looks worn, like it's been carried around and fingered a lot. "I'm afraid we don't have the time for chit chat right now."

Tony frowns when Kort flips the box open and reveals a tiny mechanism of very busy gears. Three brass needles in the center spin around each other at varying speeds, and Ziva gets dizzy just from looking at it. 

"What's that?" Tony's voice, curious, followed by a very vague answer from Kort.

"A very useful prototype I acquired through an old friend." For a moment his mouth turns smug. "I'm pretty sure Agent Cruz would give his left arm for this right now."

The needles spin faster as Kort turns and raises the mechanism higher, and Ziva has to close her eyes for a moment to block out the visual distraction. And that's when she feels the flaw in Kort's facade. 

It's just the tiniest imperfection in his attitude, barely noticeable under normal circumstances. But now that she has tasted it and feels her way around it, she suddenly knows that Kort isn't as sure about any of this as he pretends to be. He hides a lot more than just secrets.

This, she realizes with a start, is the moment where they will shape all further dealings with Trent Thomas Kort. This is the moment that decides who will lead and who will follow.

With a satisfied grunt Kort snaps his box shut, and Ziva opens her eyes. "Over there," he says and points at a row of bushes that looks no different than any other row of bushes they have come across so far. "We need to--"

"No." Ziva's voice cuts through his words like a knife, and both men suddenly stare at her. "First you make time to tell us what's going on here."

For a brief moment a strange rush of guilt comes from Kort, and she's quite sure where to place that. His mask never wavers, though, and that's the part that thoroughly confuses Ziva. She's so used to judging people by habits and behavioral patterns. It's disconcerting to suddenly sense them instead.

"No, _first_ we make sure you two no longer leave a trail." Kort's expression doesn't change a bit, but there is that tiny blur in his intent again. He's not lying exactly, but he isn't telling them all he could.

She glances at Tony, and bless his heart, he knows her well enough to pick up what she wants without a single word exchanged. "Yeah, you know what, Kort," he says with a shrug and sits down on the ground unceremoniously. "I think I'll take a nap first, and if you want to talk by then, hey, my ears won't fall off."

"Good idea," Ziva murmurs and starts off towards her own horse -- the opposite direction of where Kort wants them to go. "I'll get a blanket."

"You're wasting the small lead we have."

"No, _you're_ wasting it," Tony replies with a sharp bite to his voice, and Kort glares at him in response. "Do you honestly think we'll keep playing by your rules just because you're so _trustworthy?_ " The word is almost a sneer, and Ziva feels the angry tension in her partner rise. "You think we'll just tag along like good kids without asking any questions? Newsflash, teabag -- we're not that good. We just want to get out of here, and we were doing okay in that regard before you decided to join the crew. But you -- you actually _want_ something from us. And you won't get it without spilling a few details first."

It's strange how dominant and powerful Tony can look, even while he's sprawling on the ground and looking up at Kort. She has rarely seen this side of him, even though she's known deep down that he has it in him. Ever since she's thrown him to the ground and put a gun to his chest, long years ago, she knew.

She glances at Kort and feels the echoing anger in him... and something else. Something that tells her Tony hit pretty close to home this time. There is a lot more going on than they have suspected so far. And Kort knows a good deal about it.

"You have no idea how big this is," he grinds out through gritted teeth, and Ziva steps closer to him, her eyes narrowed.

"Easily rectified. Tell us."

He stares at her, frowning, his anger running high and almost drowning out her own thoughts for a moment. Then, very suddenly, it all drains out of him, and Ziva blinks at the unexpected change.

"I need a drink," he says, turns away and walks back to his own horse. She is pretty sure she knows what he's looking for in the saddle bags.

*** *** ***

When he comes back and flops down on the ground he shares the scotch with them, and in the end that's the thing that surprises Ziva a lot more than the fact that he actually starts talking. Especially since it's really good scotch, rolling down her tongue like liquid smoke.

"Where do you want to start?" he asks, and Ziva hands the bottle back with a shrug.

"The basics," Tony says. "Who are you working for?"

"Myself," Kort replies cautiously, then adds, "and SecNav."

Tony blinks and gives him an expression that says loud and clear he doesn't believe a word. "Yeah, right," he snorts. "You know, CI-Ray already claimed he's the NCIS backup."

"He wasn't." Kort takes a good mouthful of scotch, and Ziva frowns because that didn't feel like a lie. "He was ordered to secure you for the Agency."

"What for?"

Kort tilts his head and leans back, watching Tony. "Tests. Questioning."

"Why?" Tony asks and adds with a sigh, "And for God's sake, Kort, just talk, don't make me wring every sentence out of you."

With an annoyed sound Kort complies. "Most likely to figure out why you are coping better with this than his soldiers. They need to have methods to get their people into this zone safely, especially after they claimed jurisdiction over it."

"They did _what?_ "

"You want me to talk? Or you want to keep asking dense questions?" Kort sneers, and Ziva raises a hand to rub her forehead. There's too much aggression going back and forth suddenly, and it gives her a headache. "CIA says they can control this. NCIS says they can explain it and thus, control it better. They have the added bonus of you two being, technically, the first team on the scene, so they are very interested on getting you home safely."

"Whoa, wait -- scene?" Tony blinks, Ziva sighs, and Kort scowls. "What is this place?"

For a moment Kort lowers his head and concentrates hard on the bottle in his hand. He's frowning again, thinking. "It's a failure of massive proportions," he finally admits. Ziva watches him, and her stomach drops when she feels his hesitation to actually touch the subject. Because Kort is not the kind of person to hesitate. 

She already had a hunch that the rift's true dimensions are beyond what wants to imagine. (She's been walking through it for three days now, after all.) It still shocks her when she asks him and he answers.

"It rips clean through three states. The southern part of Utah is gone. And we better not talk about Colorado."

"Jesus," Tony mutters and waves his hand in a silent demand until Kort passes him the bottle. He wipes it and takes a good swallow, then asks, "Natural?"

And of course it's not, Ziva knows that even before Kort shakes his head. There is no way something like this can have a natural cause when it feels anything but. She smiles weakly when Tony looks at her and mouthes, "I _told_ you."

"Was this intentional?" she asks. 

When Kort doesn't reply at once, she gives him a sideways glance, and he raises a hand to rub his face. "It's far from the original project."

Tony blinks and stares at him as if he's stone drunk already. "What did they want to do?" he says slowly. "Fold up the Southern hemisphere and leave only Australia?"

"Maybe Australia _was_ the problem," Ziva muses, and Tony laughs shakily.

Kort hesitates, and she feels the brief struggle in him again. It's not in his nature to give away anything he knows for free. He's never done it in his life, and it's hard to suddenly start.

"There are a number of projects that tie into the creation of this," he finally starts. His words are uncharacteristically slow, as if he's still searching for the words that won't give it all away in one fell swoop. "Frankenstein, which was -- in parts -- modified for Special Forces units to be able to operate in here. Seeker, which provides the physical bridge into the rift. But the origin lies in the nineteen-forties. In a failed experiment and a U.S. Navy destroyer escort that was reported teleporting two hundred miles from her home shipyard and straight into Norfolk harbor."

Tony grimaces and raises the bottle again. "'Philadelphia Experiment'. Horrible movie," he says while Ziva blinks and stares at him curiously.

"I thought that was a myth."

"Oh, nooo. I had to listen to Abby once when she went into a two hour lecture about it, complete with diagrams and slides, and trust me, after that, you're willing to bel--"

"Hey!" Kort barks, and they both flinch and look at him like kids caught being naughty. "Focus. You can do your thing later." When they actually fall silent and wait for him to continue, he nods. 

"According to the rumors, the USS Eldridge was involved in experiments that began as teleportation, but were later switched to radar cloaking only. Supposedly, the original goal proved to be too hazardous for the crew." He pauses, and Ziva fights the urge to slap him because he clearly does that just for show. "The rumors were wrong. The goal of the experiments has never been switched. And it was neither teleportation, in the strictest sense of the word, nor radar cloaking."

Tony blinks slowly and when Kort doesn't continue, he rolls his eyes. "What, time travel?"

"Dimensional travel," Kort replies smugly, and yeah, Ziva can feel very clearly just how much he enjoys their disbelief. 

Her frown deepens at the sensation, and no, she's not comfortable with having Trent Kort in her head. Much like Ray -- and unlike the soldiers -- he seems to radiate energy, and his life force almost reaches out for her. It's useful for reading him, yes, but right now, as the alcohol starts working in her bloodstream, she could really do without it. She makes a note to sleep as far away from him as possible once they stop for the night. 

"Certain organizations have been looking for almost seventy years now for a way to fold space on a scale small enough to make it controllable."

"Small scale?" Tony repeats slowly. "And they start with a destroyer escort?"

Kort shrugs, and the corner of his mouth twitches. "Sometimes you start with the biggest guns you have and then work your way backwards to the dosage you really need," he says dryly. "Like back when they invented the pill."

"Okay," Tony says, his voice still slow, but she knows he isn't drunk, he's just thinking very hard. She can't blame him, her own head is swirling, and she gladly leaves the questions to him. "So correct me if I'm wrong, but _this?_ " He waves his hand around in a grand-ish gesture. "This is very, very far from small scale."

"Your powers of deduction are a marvel of modern civilization, DiNozzo," Kort rasps and rolls his eye. "Apparently, something went wrong."

"What happened?" Ziva throws in, just to take the edge off the angry tension she can suddenly feel piling up in Tony.

"I don't know," Kort admits. "But the original design involved only a tiny pocket in the dimensions, just big enough to send one agent through."

Tony looks confused. His mystery-unraveling skills haven't brought him to the conclusion yet that seems natural for Ziva: that this is indeed something the CIA would spend an insane amount of time and money on because it can be used as the ultimate weapon. (She has grown up killing people, after all. And sometimes she still thinks about good ways to dispose of them. It's a reflex she can't always suppress, much like Tony and the way he sniffs out secrets.)

"So what, we are in an alternate dimension now?" Tony eventually asks. "Or did it come here? Because we went back and forth a couple of times, and if we actually hopped between dimensions when we did that... uhm, wait. I think I just got confused." He frowns when he notices Kort's suddenly intense stare. "What?"

"That's how they found you," the Brit says. "They can track your implants whenever you're not in the rift."

"Implants," Tony repeats slowly. Then he raises his hands, giving up. "Okay, _this?_ Is the moment where it gets way too X-Files for me."

"Only now?" Ziva snorts while Kort gets to his feet and pats the dirt off his pants absentmindedly. He suddenly feels a lot more serious, and Ziva's eyes narrow when he turns to her.

"We can't waste any more time. Can we postpone the rest of the campfire stories until later?"

Ziva tilts her head and pretends to think about it, but Kort doesn't even wait for her reply, he turns and walks towards the same row of bushes he made out earlier. There is no hesitation coming from him at all, and it confuses Ziva that he is so utterly sure they will follow.

*** *** ***

"So," Tony asks while they do follow him eventually. "What happened to the other people in this freaky inter-dimensional sideshow? Did they just go phoof?"

"I have no idea." Kort's reply is brisk, and his attention is clearly focused on something other than answering questions now. "And I don't care. For all I know they can be trapped in a happy bubble over on Planet Wasteland. I'm trying to deal with what we have here."

Ziva stares at his back. She's not too comfortable with the fact that at this very moment, she understands Trent Kort perfectly.

*** *** ***

By the time they reach the pocket of normal-space Kort has been aiming for, Tony's gut is back to being unhappy. 

He knows they barely scratched the surface of what is going on here, and he itches to ask more questions. He hates to go into a situation blind. But it's like most things in life -- it's a constant give and take, and since they already took, it seems like now it's their turn to give.

The way the air around it wavers tells Tony this one is a small pocket, too, barely the size of his living room, but it'll be enough to carry a few lungfuls of fresh air, and it seems to be big enough for Kort's purpose.

"Uncover your left arms," he says just before they step inside. "Once we're in, we need to work fast." He takes another small device out of his pocket, but unlike the earlier one this is just a simple black plastic casing with two buttons and a scratched display. Currently, it looks pretty much dead, which is no surprise. "After that, we need to get as far away from here as possible because it will still be enough time for them to get a fix on you."

Tony shoots Ziva a glance, and yeah, he sort of figured it out already, with Kort working for SecNav and against his CIA buddy, but it's still weird to see it confirmed. "Someone's gone rogue."

Ziva shrugs. Looks like she just arrived at the exact same conclusion. 

" _Someone_ saved both your arses from being experimented on for the next couple of years," Kort scoffs while he takes Ziva's forearm and runs his fingers over her skin until he finds what he is looking for. "There," he murmurs, and Ziva reaches for the spot he indicates and feels her way around her own body.

"That's a scar," she says, but before the word is out of her mouth completely, Tony sees something in her face change. She just found something beneath the scar.

"Give me your knife," she orders him, and she's suddenly very pale. Her eyes are wide and too vulnerable, and he doesn't like it when she looks like that. He never has.

But Kort grabs her arm and twists it. The shock in her eyes switches instantly to scathing anger when she tries to get out of his grip, and yeah, that's much better. That's the Ziva Tony is used to.

"I would strongly advise against that," Kort says. He doesn't back down, doesn't let go of her wrist, and apparently he knows a sneaky trick or two because Ziva can't shake him off that easily. He's in her face now, meeting her eyes to show her he's absolutely serious about this. "Unless you want to spend the rest of your days in this lovely little bubble, of course."

He finally lets go of her arm, and she rubs her wrist with an angry frown. "What are you talking about?"

He doesn't reply at first, just raises his plastic device and presses it to the spot he discovered on her arm. When he pushes one of the buttons, the display comes to life and starts to scroll through code sequences that would make McGee burst into tears of love. "Only part of the implant is the locator," he says while he stares at the code fragments. "The far bigger part of it adjusts your brain wave patterns to keep you synched with this dimension."

The code patterns stop moving abruptly, and one line in particular blinks. Kort makes a satisfied sound and presses the second button, and Ziva jumps with an expression that says she wants to tear her arm away. "Stings," she explains when she meets Tony's eyes, suddenly tense.

It takes about a minute until Kort takes the box off her arm again and turns to Tony. His implant sits slightly higher, almost by his elbow. Ziva keeps staring at the Brit while he searches her partner. Keeps rubbing her arm absentmindedly while Kort runs his code sniffer on Tony's implant.

"When did I get this?" she asks suddenly, and Tony turns his head to look at her. She's still pale, and she looks confused. Like she just wants to sit down now and wrap her arms around her knees for a minute.

Kort doesn't notice it, though. He concentrates on his device instead, and that makes him careless enough to actually answer her question. "The summer after Vance broke up your team," he murmurs and pushes the second button. Tony yelps as a sharp bite shoots up his nerve endings, a freakish mix of pain and heat that feels as if his elbow has just been hit by a brick. _'Stings'? We really have to work on your vocabulary, Ziva..._ "You were incapacitated after the bombing. They used your time in the hospital to their advantage."

For a moment the pain in his arm turns into a stabbing knife, and that distracts Tony's attention from his partner. "Dammit," he mutters and watches Kort's mouth twist into a grin. God, the bastard's loving this, every damn second of it.

"You, on the other hand," said bastard continues just then, "have your late Director Sheppard to thank for your modifications."

Tony blinks slowly and stares down at the bald head, and for a moment he's not sure he heard that one right. His mind stumbles as he plays back the words in his head. They still don't want to click quite right, and he can't figure out what part of the sentence throws him off more. Ziva's gaze is suddenly heavy on him, but he can't. Can't look at her now, not when his head is about to explode.

She's not the only one who feels his sudden tension, though. Kort raises his head and stares at him with narrowed eyes. "What did you think, DiNozzo?" he finally asks. "That you're still alive because the world can't bear to part with your good looks?"

Spelled out like that, it does sound ridiculous.

*** *** ***

It doesn't surprise him when Kort ends up flat on his back barely five steps out of the normal space. Kort, on the other hand, stares at Ziva as if she is now completely out of her mind, and he even starts to open his mouth to tell her as much. Her grip on his throat tightens, though, and judging by the look that suddenly flashes across his face Ziva knows at least one pressure point more than he does.

"Talk," she says, and for a few seconds he watches her, his brows drawn together, his mouth twisted into an angry sneer.

"We don't have time for this," he eventually grinds out. His eyes flick to Tony for a heartbeat, but if he expects support of any kind here, heck, then his brain wave pattern adjustments have knocked a few of his own cells loose.

"You heard the lady," Tony offers and crosses his arms.

Kort's expression doesn't change the slightest bit, but Ziva suddenly tilts her head as if something caught her attention. "I know you have a lot of experience when it comes to inflicting pain," she murmurs and raises her left hand to dig her thumb into a certain spot of his shoulder. "Do you know as much about enduring it?"

His eyes narrow while her thumb presses harder, and he huffs, "I know enough not to be impressed by that." From the way his voice strains, though, Tony suspects that his arm currently feels like it's about to fall off.

Ziva keeps watching him carefully, with her head still tilted to the side like a curious bird. Then she suddenly lets go of his throat and slides her right hand slowly down Kort's chest. She stops right over his heart, and her fingers spread slowly, as if she's feeling around for something.

"Ah," she says, and that's when Tony sees the briefest flash of panic in Kort's usually guarded expression. Ziva sees it, too, and she smiles suddenly, so sweetly that a shudder crawls up Tony's back. Her eyelids flutter halfway shut, and she resumes talking. "I've always known more about both sides of the equation than you ever will, Thomas, so don't play tough with me." Her voice slows down to a crawl, and Kort grinds his teeth and doesn't reply, just stares at her with unmistakable fury. Ziva leans over him, and her index finger taps his chest, just once. "I learned a new trick since we met the last time."

Tiny energy lines snake up between her fingers, and Tony thinks that on some level this should surprise him, but it doesn't. She has always adapted fast.

Kort's face, on the other hand, changes into a too blank mask that speaks loudly of his disbelief. "You won't kill me," he says eventually, and maybe it's simply ingrained in his nature, much like Tony and his reality-defying moments, but even though he's on the ground and overpowered, Kort packs some insane confidence in his voice. He may have already 'untagged' them, but he's still useful to them. And he knows it.

Ziva just keeps smiling at him. The static flares dance excitedly around her fingers for a moment and Kort winces. "You're right," she says, so softly as if she were talking to a lover. "I won't kill you yet. But I have no problem with making you scream."

On the last word she suddenly presses her hand down as if she wants to shove the energy she took back into him, and whatever that does to Kort, his face suddenly contorts. His back arcs up and his body tenses as if she had just tried to resuscitate him in a very unconventional way.

He gasps for air when Ziva eases up for a moment, and he looks like he's torn between throwing up and flinging the mother of all insults at her. He does neither, and Tony has to admit he's impressed... and a tiny bit sorry that Kort is too well-trained to give in on these impulses. Seeing Ziva's reaction would have been pretty rewarding.

She doesn't ask him again to talk. She just keeps her hand over his heart, keeps the energy flowing from her hand at a noticeable level while Kort stares at her and weighs his options.

It's a no-brainer, really. All three of them know he will talk eventually. It still comes as a surprise to Tony when the rogue agent actively makes his decision.

"There once was a girl," he abruptly spits out, and Tony blinks because the old fairy tale opening sounds just plain wrong when combined with Kort's sneer. "She was her daddy's pride. His perfect little warrior."

Tony glances at Ziva, and he can't say that he's happy with what he sees. Her expression is so frozen suddenly that he can almost feel her pain from where he stands. She already knows she's not going to like this. And she knows that no matter how hard she'll brace herself, it will most likely knock her off her axis.

"But then the little girl went away from home for a while, and she got to play with other kids. And she discovered that there are other things in life except being obedient and killing people. She adapted to her new life so well that one day daddy was no longer sure if she still answered to him. So he had to come up with a way to make her a loyal daughter again."

Tony keeps staring at her face so he won't miss the moment when it gets too much for her. Keeps clenching his hands into fists. Keeps a very tight check on his body so it won't betray him and he ends up slamming his foot into Kort's face.

"He remembered a program one of his CIA friends had introduced him to. He had never cared enough to find out what the program was really about. All he was interested in were the side effects -- the conditioning. And the control it supposedly offered over the test subjects. And so he volunteered the eager little warrior."

And that's the moment where Kort suddenly hesitates and watches Ziva's face carefully, and for some reason Tony is sure he isn't just checking her reactions. He's pondering how much to tell her from here on.

"He was advised against it, but he had faith in her abilities. He ignored the warnings that previous test subjects had ended up emotionally unstable at the best and stark raving mad in a lot of cases. Daddy shrugged it all off and told his advisors that his girl was strong and a survivor. She wouldn't end up like her brother."

And that's it, that's the feeling of his stomach dropping and leaving him nauseated. He wants to throw up. Wants to bash in Kort's unmoving, unemotional face. Wants to wind back time for measly five minutes and make sure Ziva never hears that.

She's very pale all of a sudden, and for a heartbeat Tony wants to reach out and touch her. Steady her.

Then Kort raises himself up on his elbows and gets into her face. "You two are the only remaining survivors of the first generation implants," he says. "That's why the CIA wants you. They have to figure out why, now that they have a situation of this magnitude to contain."

His words are sharp and meant to cut through her confusion, and in a way he succeeds: Ziva snatches her hands from him as if his touch suddenly hurts her physically. Then she is up on her feet and walks away from him with brisk steps. Her back is very, very straight, but her hands shake, and when she meets Tony's eyes, he sees tears swirl beneath the glow.

*** *** ***

She can't remember the last time she felt this cold. 

But then again, she can't think at all right now. Every time she tries she feels like something inside her freezes over and then, when she touches it, gives way and shatters into dozens of tiny, sharp-edged pieces.

She's frayed and torn, and when Tony is suddenly behind her and his hand touches her elbow, she shudders hard and breaks a little more. And maybe that's why she reacts differently to his touch this time. Why she turns around and falls into his arms and buries her face in his neck without thinking twice about it. He breathes in, slightly shocked, and she understands, she gets how he doesn't really know what to do with her when she's like that. They've never been like this after all. But right now she needs him to be the strong one. Just this once.

His arm comes up around her a heartbeat later, and while he moves into the embrace, his hesitancy gives way to sudden, fierce protectiveness. His lips brush against her temple, and then he sighs. She can tell he wants to say something, wants to maybe ask how she's holding up. The words never make it out, though, and in the end he just pulls back slightly and raises a hand to touch her cheek.

"No," she presses out, mumbling the answer to his unspoken question against his chest. "I'm not okay." She blinks and turns her head to look at the hand still stroking her face. The knuckles, in stark contrast to the careful touch, are raw and reddish, and she takes a slow breath. "He's right. We can't sit around and wait for them to pick us up."

He doesn't agree, not by a long shot. She can feel it in his bones, in the way his arm tightens around her for the briefest moment. He still lets go of her and walks past her to get his horse ready. She stares at his back, and while she waits for her hands to stop trembling she thinks that for reasons she can't fathom she is incredibly lucky.

*** *** ***

Kort catches up with them not too long after that. She's not really surprised when she sees him spit blood.

*** *** ***

Later, she won't be sure which one of them started talking to the other first, since Ziva's own focus is narrowed down to escape, to flight, to getting home as soon as possible. She gets more and more agitated with each minute, and every stop they make, whether it is to water the horses or to rest their own weary bodies, is a delay that grates on her nerves and rubs her patience raw. She doesn't even care if Kort is still with them. She certainly doesn't stop to check.

But at one point, she can't help noticing how Tony is talking to him, how their heads are close together, voices low despite the fact that they are obviously arguing. Kort talks a lot more than he did so far, and Tony listens quietly and concentrates hard. Part of her wants to know what they are talking about. The much bigger part is afraid to ask.

*** *** ***

The longer they ride, the more barren and dry the landscape gets, until Tony remarks that finally there's a part of Nevada that lives up to its name. The green fields soon give way to dry rubble and dust, and the farm houses get fewer and fewer. They now take each opportunity they get to water the horses, but eventually they have to stop because it's getting dark and the animals are too tired. They held up much better than Ziva would have expected (she guesses they are not just feeding on grass whenever they stop) but even these tough little things eventually reach a point where they simply can't go on any further. 

Her own body complains, too, and she doesn't even want to guess about how Tony must feel by now. She knows it's only reasonable to call it a night but it still frustrates her. She wants to keep going. Wants to run until she is finally back home and can curl up in a corner and forget all of this exists. Wants to pretend it never happened in the first place.

They stop at one of the strange farmhouse clusters that is just as deserted as its siblings in the valley were. She still doesn't like the atmosphere of these places, the way they speak too loudly of its inhabitants who have vanished into thin air, but the horses need food. They can't run on energy forever.

She volunteers to take care of them while the men set up camp in the barn. She can tell they still have some talking left to do, and right now, she doesn't feel like listening.

*** *** ***

The barn is quiet when she finally brings up enough nerves to turn her back on the horses and go inside. For a moment she thinks she wasted enough time and they are already asleep, but then she realizes they are simply waiting for her, and her stomach drops.

They have set up their makeshift camp in one corner of the barn, taking cover between bales of hay. A lantern is lit and placed on a spot of hard dirt they have meticulously cleared of any hay or other even remotely flammable material, and that's probably a wise choice because the lantern's wick crackles excitedly, as if it was a campfire in a former life.

Ziva shifts from one foot to the other, and Tony raises his head to look at her. She finds that yes, the lantern's glare is bright, but the green glow of his eyes turns out to be the real beacon for her, and even though she's still hesitant, she is drawn to it. To him.

Moth to a flame. One of the most overused analogies in fiction, but oh so accurate. At least sometimes.

"Hey," he says when she gets closer, and her steps falter. She looks around to cover for the moment of childish hesitation and grabs one of the blankets they have laid out, then flops down beside Tony on the ground. His hand touches her back and rubs small circles, and she has to fight the urge to moan and close her eyes. He knows too well how to touch her just right. Dangerous, if he ever finds out.

The bruise on Kort's jaw is an ugly, animated shadow, deepened by the flickering light, and Ziva is not really sure what to make of the way he looks at her now. He doesn't look happy, that much is certain.

Then again, it's Kort. He probably doesn't even have the genes to look happy.

"Our visually impaired friend was just talking," Tony offers with a grim smile. He's almost nudging Kort with his stare, and other man sighs and leans back against a bale of hay.

"You are incredibly annoying, DiNozzo," he states, but instead of getting riled up, Tony beams at him happily for a second.

"Thank you!" he says. Then the amusement drains out of his face and he gets so serious that Ziva wants to swear she feels the chill of it against her bare arm. "He got a pretty good deal with the new SecNav out of us, you know."

Kort grimaces when Ziva looks at him. "It sounds so trite when you put it like that."

"Then use your own words," Ziva suggests. She's not sure when exactly her voice has turned cold like this. "And wrap them up nicely."

She can feel that Kort is not impressed by it, but for some reason he still starts talking. "Keep in mind that there is no chance to hide this rift from the public," he states bluntly. "There is only damage control left, and currently several agencies fight for control over this sector. I chose the one that seems logical, both in opportunities and in their approach to the situation. But as long as the CIA claims they're in charge because they have the right people to _control_ this--"

"When they caused it themselves?" Tony snorts and shakes his head. "Gotta love them..."

"Of course they didn't cause it. Officially, this is a natural disaster of unknown origin." Kort shrugs. "I doubt there are many people left who know otherwise."

He falls quiet for a moment and stares at Ziva, scrutinizing her. "If they get you back, they will poke and prod you until they have enough scientific background to win this pissing contest." He pauses again, then adds, "Not that they would ever _admit_ to having you..."

Ziva nods, stiffly. Her fingers twitch against her thigh. "Is that the real reason why Agent Cruz began a relationship with me?" she asks, and Tony's head whips around. She feels his shock, mixed with something that tastes a lot like guilt, and for a heartbeat the sensation of his emotions is so strong that she has to take a few deep breaths so she doesn't drown in it. 

She doesn't want to know. Not about Ray, and not about the things that drive Tony, at least not right now. But she still has to ask. 

The pressure of Tony's hand in her back suddenly increases, and whatever brought on the previous set of emotions, it's gone now. All she feels now is concern, radiating loudly and vibrating in her bones.

Kort doesn't notice their silent exchange. He just shrugs once more. "The Agency probably put him on the job after Mossad's attempt of re-initiating you failed. They needed a new focus for your trust."

Ziva blinks. Her hands are cold all of a sudden, and she can't bring herself to ask the only logical question, so Tony does it for her -- belts out what the _fuck_ Kort means with that.

She flinches. Doesn't want to hear the answer. She almost, almost knows what it will be, after all, and she has no desire for this particular mystery being unraveled. She's not like Tony. Some secrets she doesn't need to know.

A shudder runs down her back, and suddenly she desperately needs to do something, needs to get away from this, so she grabs her blanket and slips under it and simply turns her back to Kort.

She uses Tony's thigh as a pillow and pulls the blanket up high, covering her ears. She knows it won't do any good, and it certainly won't block out the words, but it's the only thing she can do, short of running out into the desert. And her legs wouldn't carry her too well right now.

She tries to ignore Kort's words, but she still hears them. Hears that the mission in Somalia was well-timed. That it would have taken only one or two more days for a second Kidon unit to free her. That NCIS, by interfering, ruined a few carefully conceived plans and, by dragging her to safety, to American soil, messed with her conditioning and turned her away from Mossad irrevocably.

Tony's hand slowly rubs her arm by the time Kort talks about their therapy sessions that cloaked the conditioning. Sessions that, instead of consoling them, made her more obedient and him more protective, simply because others wanted them this way. 

She can't think about any of this right now. She's been too confused for too long, and this doesn't help. She does try to figure out how she feels about her father now, but for some reason it doesn't get her anywhere. Her emotions seem spent when it comes to him, dulled after too much pain and too many ugly surprises. 

To her surprise she finds that she suddenly hates Jenny Sheppard with a fierce passion, though, and that emotion almost rips her apart because Jenny was her friend. 

But she was also the one who did this to Tony, who wanted him predictable and protective and reacting to the right triggers. Who, through this, actually made him vulnerable at the wrong time in his life. Who didn't care that he would suffer for much longer than one undercover assignment would last.

Her hand sneaks up to his thigh and presses against his muscles when he stiffens more and more. He doesn't look at her, but his hand grabs hers at one point, and that's a good feeling, even though it hurts after a while. He's a lot stronger than he knows sometimes.

She recalls Ray's way of treating her, caring in a completely different way _(for her, not about her)_ and then, very suddenly, she remembers Michael, too. And all of a sudden the missing pieces for her puzzle cascade into place. 

For the first time she feels as if she is able to take a step back and look at the complete picture -- the intricate details of how Michael always seemed to give her the right lines at the right time and reminded her about family and duty so regularly that she _should_ have noticed much earlier. And at the same time, she now sees other nuances of the puzzle -- of Tony, genuinely caring for her. Tearing at her emotions even more. Following his own impulses and trying to keep her safe when she could no longer do it on her own. She looks back at her desperate struggle at that time, and -- as weird as it sounds -- with hindsight comes an awful clarity, and it suddenly makes sense. All of it. 

She was torn apart like that for a reason. She didn't really have a choice.

Tony's fingers unclench carefully and go back to stroking her arm, and while she curls up and inches closer to him, she wonders if she has one now.

*** *** ***

She doesn't really go to sleep, even after all the talking is done. She keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, and her mind is so restless that she hurts almost physically from trying not to think any more.

She twitches nervously by the time the men finally kill the lantern and Tony stretches out beside her, and for a second her fingers clench in her blanket as if it's the only shield that keeps the insanity of the world from crashing in. She waits for him to touch her. She knows he wants to, and he's looking at her intensely enough to make her skin crawl. But he doesn't reach out yet, he just looks at her and keeps breathing quietly beside her. He's close enough for her to simply roll over and bury her face in his chest, but she's afraid if she does that, it will loosen something inside her she can't control.

And then Tony suddenly sighs and raises the edge of his blanket in a gesture that asks her to come over and share his warmth, and that's one of the moments where she has no choice at all.

He smells familiar. His arms around her feel familiar, too, and she wonders how that can be after just a few days of really knowing the sensation. She breathes out slowly, and while her own arms tighten around him she wonders if this will be too much, for either of them. But Tony at least doesn't seem to mind. He even drags her closer until she can feel him from head to toe and a tiny, helpless sound rises deep in her throat.

He's so warm.

His lips move against her cheek, and Ziva blinks when she understands the quietly whispered words. He feels so strong against her, holding her, his thigh resting comfortably between hers as if they have years of experience in that regard. She doesn't know how he can be so sure this is something other than a mere reaction to their conditioning. She's way too confused to be as confident about it as he is.

"Ziva," he says, his voice stern because he senses her hesitation, and she bites her lip and tries not to let him down. He strokes her face again, and she leans into his touch a little more and breathes in his scent.

She remembers that first night, when she brought him coffee in the rain. Remembers how she enjoyed smelling him and looking at him long before this experiment messed her up.

"It's like hypnosis," he murmurs close to her ear just then, and she shudders and presses closer to him. It's scary how well he knows her sometimes. "It only works if you want it to."

And she's not sure it's that easy, really. In fact, she is almost certain things are a lot more complicated than this. But his lips on her skin feel good, and that, at least, isn't complicated at all.

It's probably the only thing that's ever been easy between them.

*** *** ***

He's gone when she wakes up, and for a brief moment she panics. She rolls to her back and stares at the barn's roof above her while she waits for her breathing to calm down. For a while she watches the swirling shadows chasing themselves in the semi-darkness. She waits for her pulse and her mind to settle and tries not to wonder when her heart has made that particular detour. 

Kort is still asleep a few feet away, and before she can help it, she closes her eyes and tries to get a taste for what is going on in his head right now. For some reason, though, there is nothing from Kort -- no dream, no emotion, nothing that even suggests he is there, really. Instead, she suddenly feels Tony's presence loud and clear, just outside the barn, and that sends such a rush of relief through her that she reels from it. She gets to her feet as quietly as she can. She has no desire to have Kort follow her, and so she almost sneaks out of the barn, towards where she senses Tony.

He's on the ground, leaning against the trunk of a crippled tree. His eyes are closed, and his hands move slowly through the patch of grass, fingertips digging into the ground every now and then. Bluish fire sneaks up his arms and seeps into his skin, and Ziva stops to just watch him for a moment.

His lips twitch, and her gaze drops first to his mouth, then slides down his chest. He has stripped down to just sweatpants and a white undershirt, and she thinks she has never fully appreciated how good that looks on him. She likes how his arms tense and his muscles tighten while he draws more energy from the ground. For a heartbeat she can almost feel it prickle on her own tongue, and that sensation mixes with her memory of his taste.

And just then he opens his eyes and stares at her. His eyes glow brighter than just a few hours ago, and her heart suddenly pounds in her throat when she feels the way he reacts to seeing her like that, all sleep-mussed and relaxed. 

Her feet move before she realizes it, and for a moment she thinks she should wonder if this is just another reaction based on other peoples' manipulations. She doesn't care, though. She just needs to feel him right now, and that can't be wrong, so she climbs into his lap and puts her arms around his neck and kisses him.

He hums appreciatively and wraps his own arms around her waist to draw her closer. His body already reacts lazily to her, and she looks at him, laughing breathlessly when he gives her an apologetic grin that doesn't really convey he's sorry.

"What are you doing out here?" she murmurs and runs a hand through his hair. He hums again while he leans into her touch and closes his eyes.

"Recharging," he says and raises a hand to wriggle his fingers. "Helps with the sore muscles." He hesitates. Runs his fingertips up her back while he suddenly starts thinking, and that makes her nervous before he even opens his mouth. "Thought you were asleep."

"Couldn't," she presses out. It's all she can say, really, because everything else would choke her again, and she just barely managed to tuck it all away. She's thankful that Tony gets her without any big words, though, and just keeps stroking her back. 

"So," he says eventually. "Tomorrow."

Ziva blinks and watches him carefully. She's not sure when he became so serious. "What's tomorrow?"

For a while he just looks at her, runs his thumb down her cheek and weighs his words carefully. "We reach the edge of the rift, at least according to Kort," he says eventually. "And the team waiting for us."

"I do not like to talk about eggs not laid," she says and leans forward to let her lips brush against his temple. Perhaps he will no longer talk about this if she starts to distract him.

"We need to. We turned into the centerpieces of some fucked-up chess game," he murmurs, and she grinds her teeth and wants to run. He draws back and scrutinizes her in a way that makes her squirm even more uncomfortably. "Ziva. Seriously? You'd rather be on the run from the CIA for the rest of your life?"

"No," she says and doesn't meet his eyes. "I just want to go home. I want things to be as they were." She swallows hard, and a frown draws her brows together. "I was just getting used to it."

Tony watches her quietly, and she can feel the turmoil in him. "Nothing's going to be as it was," he says eventually. "This zone isn't going to go away, and seriously, if there's a way NCIS can keep jurisdiction over it? I'm all for it. Better them than our CIA buddies."

"Just because we were the first agents on the scene?" She shakes her head. "I really don't think that's a strong enough argument."

"That's not the only reasoning," he says, and she frowns at him and shrugs. "SecNav's trying to make a case based on the fact that the original experiment was Navy-based and it got screwed up badly in the hands of the CIA. Us being here, that's just the icing on the cake. That's NCIS already securing the scene while the CIA still searches for the clue bus."

She bites back the first response that comes to mind. The second one also. Then she turns her head again, staring a hole into the vegetation. "Still sounds weak to me."

Tony's hand draws circles on her back, and her skin tingles after a while. Or maybe that's from the way he still looks at her, trying to figure out what she thinks. How to do this right.

"I--" He pauses, clears his throat and tries again. "I don't like the idea of handing this over to the CIA just because we don't feel like dealing with it."

Something flickers at the edge of her perception, and she glances at him with suddenly wide eyes. "You like this place." It sounds almost accusing, and for a second he even ducks his head. But soon enough his chin comes up again, and he meets her eyes squarely.

"It's a big, fat mystery," he says, and this time his voice is firm. He's suddenly very sure about this. "And I think there's a lot left to find out about it. A lot more than the CIA will ever care about. They'll just lock it away for the next twenty years."

She stares at him, and suddenly she feels like she can't breathe, can't move, can't even think. Because she _doesn't_ want to figure out this place. She can't allow herself to be pressured into this, and so the only answer that comes to mind is the one that tears her apart.

"You could stay," she still offers. Three words that hurt in her throat as if she just swallowed razors. And she doesn't want him to see it, doesn't want to be weak like that, but her body still tenses, and his arms are suddenly tight around her, as if he suspects she wants to run.

He really knows her too well.

Her nostrils flare as she tries to suck in air and doesn't quite succeed because her chest is too tight. It gets even worse when his hands suddenly come up to grab her face and pull her close, until her nose brushes his and she feels the warmth from his lips on her own mouth. And that's when she realizes that he has trouble containing the emotions welling up inside him, too.

"Not if you're elsewhere," he presses out eventually, and then he kisses her hard enough to make her head spin. A tiny sound, somewhere between distressed and aroused, forces itself out of her throat.

He's so very serious right now. She feels it, deep down in her bones: he wants this. It's his thing, his own exciting world, his big adventure that's going to be better than any movie. 

But he would still give it up for her in a heartbeat. She wouldn't even have to ask.

The emotion is so raw and sincere that it chokes her, and she kisses him back heatedly. There's a bit of despair in it, too, and he feels it and starts unraveling in return. Energy suddenly surges through him, and he tries to control it, tries to hold it back, but can't, and she gasps when it spills over from his lips. It fills her mouth and makes her skin tingle and her head spin, and suddenly he's hard against her, and yeah, that's it, she thinks as her body rocks against his involuntarily.

It's so easy to fall for him, really.

He pulls back after a while and stares at her, and his eyes glow harshly. A tiny trickle of light still clings to his lips, and she's tempted to lick it away, but his hands on her face keep her from leaning back into him. "Listen," he says, and his voice is rough and too emotional. "I swear, I love kissing you any way I can." Her heartbeat stutters, and her eyes widen, but Tony doesn't even notice, doesn't realize what he just said. Or maybe he doesn't care anymore. "But this... I'd really miss it."

She takes a deep breath, and when he finally lets go of her face, she leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes. Her heart beats so fast right now that she's afraid it wants to jump out of her chest, and her thoughts whirl madly, dust in a snow globe, not settling. His thumb strokes the pulse in her neck slowly, and that doesn't help at all.

"I'm tired of being used," she murmurs, and he brushes his lips against her temple. "I want them to stop manipulating me."

He smiles against her skin, and she's not sure what to make of that until he says, "In here, they can't."

She draws back and looks at him, and it shocks her a bit, but he's serious. And he's right. She can taste it if they try.

"How," she says eventually, her voice slightly shaky, "do you always know what to say?"

For a heartbeat he stares at her, blinking, trying to figure out what's going on in her head. And then he laughs suddenly, pulls her back to his chest and kisses her. "I don't," he mutters, and she bites her lip when he presses his face into the curve of her neck. "You know I just pull stuff out of my ass."

His lips smile against her skin, and Ziva closes her eyes. He's still hard, and while his mouth is busy on her neck, she feels her skin tingle with the energy his tongue leaves all over her.

God, yes, he's right about one thing -- it certainly is addictive. And she would miss it, too.


	7. And then

He runs his hand through the earth and feels the shift in the energies at the same time Ziva turns her face into the wind. Something prickles against his fingertips, and it's familiar enough by now that he can place it easily.

He looks up at Ziva and finds her watching him. "They're coming," he says, and she nods.

It's the third supply trek this month, and by now they have developed their own routine for detecting them early: he senses the horses, she feels her way around the people. 

This particular trek is supposed to bring new workers. And a science nerd. Tony just hopes this one is better prepared than the last, who came with a crate full of instruments that didn't do anything. Apparently no one had gotten around to mentioning the lack of electricity.

He gets up and brushes the dirt off his pants while he walks over to Ziva and slings his arm around her. She runs a hand through her hair and smiles at him while she shakes the shadows out of her curls. Her eyes flicker at him in a way that is just this side of intimate, and it still catches him unawares too often how much he loves this. Loves her. Loves the new ease they have between them suddenly.

It really took too long to get there.

He walks her back to the camp while they talk about this and that, and he's not sure how exactly they jump from newspapers and star gossip to Ziva saying that sometimes she misses DC.

He kind of agrees, but since she already knows that, he just snorts and says, "Wait, what, you miss the boring office? The paperwork, the interrogations where they stop you from having real fun? Gibbs's stare? Really?"

She turns her head and looks at him with a mock frowny face and says, "Abby, McGee, picking up a new girl every night, Gibbs's stare?" He grimaces when she puts it this way and shrugs, and Ziva suddenly stops dead in her tracks and stares at him, surprised. "You _do_ miss it!"

"Well. Yeah, sort of," he says, then adds hastily, "Uhm... three out of four." 

And sure enough, that makes her laugh. "What, you don't miss Gibbs?"

"I don't miss being bored out of my skull on some days. I don't miss the gruesome bodies."

She laughs again, and he likes the way she leans into him. Ah, well. He's easy. He likes most of the things she does to him. "True. We just don't have any bodies."

"And I don't miss the rotating girls," he says, and that throws her off for a moment, so heavily that she almost stumbles. Her arm tightens around his waist, and she raises her head to look at him. There's a hint of confusion in her face, and a bit of awe, too.

Then, because she doesn't have a real answer to that and because she's still not used to him speaking his mind when it comes to emotions, she gives him a half-smile and says, "Well, I do like the fact that you are no longer bored." And for a moment Tony isn't entirely sure if she means the office work or the girls. Probably a bit of both. "I certainly don't miss the spit balls..." 

He grins and pulls her close for a moment. Then he lets go of her waist so she'll be free to go for her gun once they reach the supply trek. Sometimes there are still new guys who flip, despite the training.

*** *** ***

Ziva hesitates for a moment when they reach the wagons, and he wonders what's up. Then he suddenly recognizes the man she's staring at, the one who's busy unloading stuff from one of the horse carts. And yeah, that's like his whole reality is shifting at once. 

He knows the guy. He's just never seen his blue eyes glow so fiercely.

He is still mostly speechless by the time Gibbs pulls Ziva into a tight hug and then glares at Tony over her shoulder, glares as if he has missed at least three Christmases and five Thanksgivings without calling once. 

"Figures," Tony says, and then a shit-eating grin splits his face. "They pick the one guy who doesn't _have_ emotions to unhinge."

And while Ziva turns her head and smiles at him, he laughs because, yes, goddammit, he _has_ missed that glare.


End file.
